THE YELLOW DELUGE
At three in the afternoon of Friday, the ninth, fewer words probably
were being spoken over the breadth of Britain than ever in a populous
country before. Hundreds of thousands of the moneyed, the aristocrat,
the royal, had migrated to Man and Ireland, where, too, was a silence
that waited. But the British royal household had abided. As for the
Prince of Wales, ever since the hour of the cremation of Chinnery it
was as if a paralysis had taken possession of him.
At that hour of three the Princess Elizabeth had still not the Redlike
Ray from Eulalia: and now all mortal things hung upon the vanity of
this Teutonic fräulein, who sat with guilty tremors, putting off from
hour to hour the revelation that might rescue the relics of western
civilisation, in the hope of yet making that revelation in her own way.
When, on the Thursday morning, the Princess had gone to take up the
box, Eulalia, after consenting, had said: “I think, after all, that I
should prefer it not to be taken away, as I have it in trust....”
And it had been excruciatingly difficult for the Princess to ask
again—the thinnest wall of delicacy now between her and the box, but a
wall of steel.
But she had broken through it that same day, and afresh on the Friday:
had asked afresh—with a scarlet flush.
And this made Eulalia stubborn. She remembered by this time that a
coster-girl who had reminded her of Oyone had snatched the box, and
also that she had seen Oyone speak to the Princess at the cab-door in
Chapel Street, East. This made her stubborn. She resolved to have the
box packed and despatched to “Taska” before the Princess should again
have a chance of asking. That was on the Friday at 11 +a.m.+
Accordingly, when the Princess then left her, Eulalia obtained paper
from her maid, made up the box, and placed it on the shelf of the
alabaster hearthplace of her central apartment, till the collector
should pass.
Meantime, the Princess, in love now with loneliness, clung to her own
apartments on the floor below, where she sat a staring stone, bitterly
regretting her brag, a limp and guilty rag at the going, going of the
moments, yet smitten with motionlessness.
But at four when the Queen, who was restlessly wandering, visited
her some moments, the Princess pricked herself to sprightliness and
careless smiles—knowing well all the time what the Queen had come to
hear; and though Her Majesty did not directly refer to the promised
“help,” she did say with a sigh: “Heaven knows what this night will
bring forth for mankind.”
And since the charlatan is in every extremity and fix a charlatan, and
in the last ditch dies a charlatan, the Princess now, with a bound of
her rash heart, found herself in the thick of saying: “I think, Your
Majesty, that, if Teddy will come to me at, say, six o’clock, I shall
have something of value to put into his hands.”
But _how to get it_? From then to half-past five she sat the most
agonised girl, probably, in all the agonised world.
At half-past five a Queen’s-page requested the Prince to visit Her
Majesty in the Newmarket Parlour; and there for half-an-hour they sat,
mother and son, hand in hand, with hardly the murmur of a word, and
heard windy wet weather yearning in the Park.
At twenty to six Elizabeth sped like a spectre past Her Majesty’s door
to enter Eulalia’s apartments, pallid, concentrated; resolved at all
costs to have the box.
She saw the box packed, directed; knew that soon after the stroke of
six it would be gone; but still she put off action, dallied, palely
paced, dallied, declaring across the lump of aching in her throat
that Eulalia looked lovely in the blue-festooned muslin, sole specimen
from the loom, with the miniature at her throat of the Prince in
Eton-jacket—a miniature which the Queen, to the scandal and whispering
of several, had daringly presented to Eulalia in her daring way.
But at last when the clock was about to strike six, Elizabeth miserably
found herself in the act of saying: “Oh, well, I am going to have the
box, after all”—and had it.
But Eulalia stopped her. “Your Imperial Highness—please—put yourself in
my place”—and laid hold of it.
“No, it is no good, you must.”
“I must _not_”—and now a struggle of several seconds, which only the
Princess’s terror of an explosion ended; though, as she let go, she
viciously tore the wrapping across, rendering it useless for the post,
and Eulalia then petulantly tore the whole off, in placing the box back
on the shelf.
They now stood confronted with rough sea-weather in their breasts, and
discomposed countenances; and in a tone loud with hysteric stress the
Princess said: “Your being here has made you insolent!”
Eulalia laughed!
And that laugh penetrated the still a little deaf ear of the Prince of
Wales.
He, bidden by the Queen to go to Elizabeth’s apartments “at six,” was
on the four steps outside the Newmarket Parlour, about to turn to the
right, when, to the left—that laugh....
He made some steps that way, could hear voices, and went like one in a
dream....
Meantime, the Queen, by some instinct or sense, seems to have gathered
that he was going left instead of right, and ran with stealthy
steps to see. He was then between the arch-draperies, walking like
a sleep-walker drenched in dream, and she, struck with sudden
apprehension, lifted up her voice at him: “Why that way?”
He took no notice, possibly did not even hear; and suddenly out of her
throat there broke a hoarse roar of horror and terror like a death-cry:
“_Teddy, not in there!_”—for his hand was on a door handle.
But in he went, and she, swiftly flitting, was in almost as soon as he.
There in the middle stood a muslin Eulalia, like a picture of tripping
Spring, and Flora picking roses, and there the Princess, and there the
Redlike Ray.
In the instant that the Prince saw Eulalia with one eye he saw the
ray tied with string, with the other; and lightning struck into his
consciousness the thought: “_She_ was ‘_the nurse_’....”
And for the tenth of a second he stood suspended, pulled toward her,
pulled toward the ray, but then flew to her to kneel an instant in a
scarlet passion, clasping her, with “My love! my luck! my star! my
lucky star! my love! my luck!” then was up, and he and the box vanished
together.
Within some minutes he had struck a dog blind, and was in an ulster in
the air with Sturge and Pilcher, a wet and windy air which threatened a
wild night; and before they dropped him at the Lord Warden, Dover, he
had handed them a note for Dunkirk:
“To His Excellency, Li Ku Yu. If Your Excellency likes to
meet the Prince of Wales, alone, at nine o’clock, behind the
ruins of St Mary’s, N.E. of Dover, something of moment to His
Excellency will be told. His Excellency’s safety is hereby
guaranteed.”
“But,” said Pilcher, “is this thing safe, Sir? You go alone—suppose
_he_ doesn’t.”
“You have no reason to think him treacherous,” answered the Prince.
“Still, Sir, we pray——” said Sturge.
“I’ll see,” the Prince said: “you go on.”
He passed into the hotel, as darkness fell, and the two flew on over
a rough sea, sighting on the way five different air-boats apparently
making for Britain.
At seven-forty they were standing in the Casino dancinghall before Li
Ku Yu, who sat high, smiling down upon some rite, round about him being
the Chiam (High priest) and bouzis in hosts in a thronged hall all a
hotch-potch of hues, like boxes of coloured chalks, or that coloured
spectacle in prisms, or the coloured chemistry of iridium. The two were
led quite up to him, and saw his head dotted with sweat.
He, on casting his eye over the note, had the instant thought: “Either
he has the ray, or will pretend to”; then aloud: “You, Sturge? Glad to
see you. I keep you two prisoners two hours.”
“This is outrageous!” cried out Pilcher in a maze and rage.
“Seize these men, feed, keep two hours,” Li Ku Yu murmured to a
colonel, and was instantly off, soft-footed, swift, with swinging
pigtail swaggering, slanting a wee bit backward on his heels like the
Northern Chinese, down the bowed hall, and out.
In ten minutes he, too, was in an ulster in the air, and ten men in
ulsters in his boat’s hold. (Hence he had kept Pilcher and Sturge, lest
they should follow and watch his landing.)
The night, inclined to be foul, was almost without light, and in a
quarter of an hour the knot of men were darkly disembarking south of
St Margaret’s Bay, where they hid themselves and their boat, while one
alone, an agile young scout of the Choshus, darted up and southward to
ferret out St Mary’s ruins.
He was quickly back; and then, with elaborate stealths, crawling under
hedges, through marshy mid-fields, they all darkly marauded, with more
caution than haste, having forty minutes to spare. They were seven
pigtails, three Choshus, and Li Ku Yu.
He himself reconnoitred the ruins, noted which road the Prince must
come, then gathered his gang to lie in wait behind a row of broken
stones rankly grass-grown; and from one to the other he moved,
stooping, breathing a secret: “Seize, not shoot; shoot, if need be.”
But even as he breathed it to the ninth man, with a pang of the heart
he acquired the consciousness that there, lying in wait, were not ten
men, but eleven.
“_Hands up!_—quick, quick....”
“_Bright!_” cried Li Ku Yu recognising the cry of the Prince, who had
long since slipped into the rear of the band in the dark.
“Drop your pistol.”
Li Ku Yu dropped it.
The Prince, springing over the row of stones, his muzzle still at the
other’s bosom, said: “Right turn—walk”: and they went stepping toward
Dover, a pigtail not less long than Li Ku Yu’s swinging behind the
Prince’s back, his face not less yellow-brown.
After some hundreds of yards, he muttered sullenly: “_Immoral!_”
Li Ku Yu, smiling quite unmoved, said: “Why, Prince? _You_ guaranteed
safety; I—no!”
The Prince now pocketed his pistol, saying, “I think I am as quick as
Your Excellency”—a remark which brought a rush of blood to the other’s
forehead. He made no answer.
Then, “Is Your Excellency disposed to sit here?” asked the Prince, and
they sat on a mass of rock by the path under the shadow of a larch, but
still lashed by squalls of wind and water.
There was silence. Then Li Ku Yu: “Let us be quick.”
“What is it all about?” said the Prince: “may one express to Your
Excellency the surprise one feels that one is still ignorant of the
_casus belli_ of China against the white races? You declare no war; you
invade; you butcher.”
“No time! But stay—hear. What one thing is it that concerns living
beings—that living beings care about? Happiness? Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Good! And happiness consists in worshipping God? say in ‘religion.’
Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Good! Now, the scientist denies that apes, negroes, bishops,
bouzis, dervishes are religious; denies that anyone can possibly be
religious—but him; since no one can have any knowledge of God—but
him; denies that anyone knows what religion _is_—but him. And he is
right—necessarily! Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“Good! Now, at my birth I observe two masses of men, equal in
number—one white, one yellow; both having what they call ‘a
religion’; but the brain of the yellow much more disengaged from his
‘religion,’ equally superstitious, but less deformed and diseased with
superstition, less incapable of being led to look in a centric sane
mood at the universe, and to be truly religious. So said I to myself:
‘The European brain will take two hundred years to evolve out of the
notion that Christianity has some connection with religion, resemblance
to’; and if one answer, ‘but already France, Germany, England had
rejected Christianity,’ _I_ answer back: ‘they _think_ so!’ but for
many days their mentation will be infected by the fact that for ages
their fathers entertained the conceit that a mammal of their species,
with 300 rudimentary organs, was the Infinite Itself. Imagine the
astonishment of a zoologist of Mars to know that on some planet in
space there paces an animal into whose head the disease of a conceit
so _ec_-centric could creep and fester. Man? Comic! the laughing-stock
of the cosmos! So said I: ‘Save mankind two hundred years; abolish
Europe.’”
“Well said,” said the Prince—“provided Your Excellency is sure of what
you substitute. But what genius for discovering God’s truth have the
Chinese given proof of?”
“_Cluck!_ True!—none—little. But their brain older than the
European—not more evolved—less!—but more mature for evolution.”
“I did not know that. I wonder if that is an opinion? for Your
Excellency is aware that opinions have no value. Prove it, and I need
not say that Your Excellency shall have your way unresisted by me.”
“An opinion gathered from many things! But, as to strict proof—no.”
“And for a concept which Your Excellency cannot prove you butcher a
hundred million women and children.”
“_Cluck!_ Our grandmothers’ thoughts, Prince. Is it wrong to kill an
ox, a man?”
“You are said to ‘rob them of their life.’”
“Precisely! But it is wrong to rob of anything—why? Only because you
make to suffer! to suffer long! Agreed? Good! But suffering implies
consciousness! No wrong to rob, if the robbed-from is never conscious
of it, or only conscious one second, as when you rob of life.”
“But the killer may suffer,” said the Prince.
“Ah! then! wrong! Wrong for _me_ to kill a fly, for I suffer—so made!
But not wrong to kill a flea, to kill two hundred million fleas
or men for the least reason, for _I_ do not suffer, _they_ do not
suffer—especially when done for the benefit of one! two! two hundred
millions!”
“True,” said the Prince: “but I question ‘the benefit.’ That, you
have admitted, is an opinion; _I_ have the opposite—and Mr Chinnery’s
Redlike Ray.”
Li Ku Yu started in the dark, made a grimace, sprang up. “Not civilised
warfare, Prince!”—with a grin.
“No. Hence I asked Your Excellency to come, to tell you”—the Prince,
too, stood up—“for since the white race seems to _me_ a type capable
of higher evolution than the yellow, I will not see it wiped out, if I
can help. And you seem now to be in the hollow of my hand. Shall we not
come to terms? Save your people from this—take them back to China!”
Silence ten seconds. Then Li Ku Yu: “Could not!—if I wished. The die
cast! Had the ray from Chinnery, Prince?”
“No ... Chinnery, by the way, is dead.”
Li Ku Yu snatched off his cap, bowed his brow. “Brockweir’s greatest!”
Silence.
Then: “I go, Prince. If—since—you possess this ray, we meet never more:
for this night I invade England, I myself sharing the danger of my
regiments. In case I fail, I will take dispositions to make it easier
for you to deal with the Chinese, and resettle men. I wish you well.”
“Good-night.”
Li Ku Yu walked north in front of his fluttering ulster-skirts, while
the Prince dropped, as if shot, prostrate upon the rock, sob upon sob
of world-sorrow bursting from his breast like the night-winds’ volleys,
and water from his brain like the rain. And Li Ku Yu, who heard a sob
on the squall, stopped, turned, murmured some words, and moved on.
As soon as he was back at Dunkirk he had Oyone alone in the old
Cashier’s-office, to whisper her: “_Kill!_—to-night—your chance! An
Empire your reward!”
She had never beheld him pallid and agitated before, and catching
pallor and passion from his potent emotion, flashed a defiant eye at
him. “Why send _me_? I am afraid to be in the air in the dark over the
ocean——”
“Look at a woman afraid of something!”—he pointed her out with his
finger!—“yet dreaming of queenship! Be quick, lest I teach you fear!
Whom have I to send that well knows his face? he may be painted
yellow—he may be white——”
She seized his sleeve, kneeling, staring up into his face: “Marry me! I
can’t any more—marry me!”
On which he shrank in alarm as from a rat rushing up him, palms up,
with “_Woman!_” and she sprang up with a high and tragic cry: “You do
not want me?”
“To marry takes time!” he cried. “To-morrow! To-morrow! He is at
Dover——”
“To-morrow we may die blinded, though I will not mind, if to-night you
marry me, for the earth and skies heard you promise it, and I have
bitten you in every bit of my bread, and washed in you in my bath,
and——” she broke down, dashing water from her eyes.
“So unless I marry, you do not go?”
She passionately stamped at him. “I say no!”
A dangerous look of bale shot toward her before he stood up bustlingly
with, “Let us marry—come, come——”
But this, as he had foretold, took some time, so that she saw herself
forced to be off some moments after the furtive and hurried contract
in the Garden-kiosk; and when her eyes, that teemed with pleadings
and wifely meekness, implored for a moment alone with him before her
departure, he patted her back publicly, with, “You kiss Li Ku Yu
another time, Oyone. No failure! Farewell!”
She started off with a little Japanese scout, sharp as a spaniel’s
snout, using her own old boat in which alone she felt herself at home,
though half-way over to Dover she had a horrible shock, when the boat
unaccountably dropped a hundred feet down, leaving her heart above. She
had not been in it since Li Ku Yu had ransacked its mechanism, and her
apprehension lest he should have flung it too hurriedly together again
was very unpleasant, until she descended outside Dover.
There in a shed she dressed in male clothes, and as a boy in an ulster
entered Dover, her nerves aburn with her husband’s “No failure!”—she
every five minutes shocked afresh with astonishment at finding herself
a wife! his helper and high left hand! She laughed in the face of the
rain. The night was not wilder nor the winds raged wistfuller than the
strange and dangerous things that raged in her nature.
But she soon discovered that the Prince was no longer in Dover, was off
to London by train, taking the ray—to get an air-boat, in fact, after
waiting long in vain for Pilcher’s and Sturge’s return from Dunkirk;
and he had gone as glad as vexed, thinking to see Eulalia a minute.
But he did not see her: for, as his cab was dashing through the Palace
Park, there ran to meet him Pilcher and Sturge, who half drew revolvers
at him, seeing a Chinaman.
“Where on earth have you been?” the Prince asked; and Pilcher answered:
“Kept prisoners two hours, Sir—just come—missed you at Dover—invasion
commenced—Chinese have set fire to three pine-woods between Ashford and
Folkestone for signal-fires, and are at present alighting at the rate,
we reckon, of twenty-five a minute with some camp-equipment.”
“Let’s go,” the Prince said, springing down, and in another minute was
in the air.
By that time Oyone, following him to London, was flying north of
Croydon, and her boat and his passed within two hundred yards of each
other, though she did not spy it in the dusky air, for just then for
the second time that night she had a shock of fright at the dropping
two hundred feet of her boat. But, landing safe in St James’s Park amid
drenching rain, she hid her boat, resumed her woman’s clothes, and now
stood confronted with the task of discovering the Prince.
Reckoning that his train must by now have arrived in London, she was
away to Marlborough House....
There a foreign sentry informed her that the Prince was at Buckingham
Palace, whereupon she ran back to St James’s Park, and, taking her
scout now, went up, to descend a little west of the lake in Buckingham
Palace Park—an invasion of Royal rights based upon the fact that kings
were invented before aeroplanes and air-boats were foreseen.
A second after she touched ground a drenched black figure in an oilskin
cape came trotting, but dropped down dead with the scout’s kokotana in
his heart.
The two then stood in bush, looking at the palace which had a few
lights behind its blinds.
The problem still was to hit upon the Prince, the ray: for whereabouts
in the vastness of the palace he would probably be Oyone had no notion.
But now up yonder across the central blind of the Newmarket Parlour she
spied Her Majesty’s shadow pass diademed: and she started; her clasp
tightened on her knife.
“Kill _her_,” she instantly thought, dark-hearted: “then hide; then
_he_’ll run to her; then I’ll have _him_.”
“You see that window?” she now whispered her scout: “kill everything
you meet between that arch where the sentry is and the room-door behind
that window; stab, not shoot; hide the bodies; then be back to me.”
The little Jap, quick-wristed as a twisting squirrel, instantly
slipped off and vanished, until she saw him after a minute insinuate
his nimble being into a palace-portal.
Oyone then waited ten minutes, till he was suddenly there with her
anew, holding up four fingers close before her eyes—meaning two
sentries, a gentleman-at-arms, a page; and she herself then sped away
in front of her fluttering ulster-tail with a wet wan face, her hair
fallen half-lax under her hard man’s-hat.
But the hour of the Chinese invasion, which could not be postponed when
once fixed, was against her otherwise good ruse to get at the Prince,
since _he_ was now three thousand feet in the air near Folkestone,
leaving the Chinese signal-conflagrations glaring like eclipse and
the midnight sun on the night below and behind him, he making for
mid-channel; and, mixed with the hubbub of the wind blustering by the
boat’s bow, was now a troubled sound of moaning and lamenting in the
air.
Pilcher, steering, was grovelling at the hatchway, with violet-blue
goggles, got from Sturge, at his eyes, and a bandage over the goggles
which anon he lifted a little; Sturge, begoggled, was in the hold, and,
acting as watch-keeper, anon peeped up to see that no boat got above
them; and the Prince, begoggled, his eyes tight, lay on his face in
the bows under the ray-box, which was bound to the stem, its cap bent
somewhat downward.
And out of it for miles into the night, downward, skyward, to right, to
left, spread the rain of rays, invisible at a distance, but appearing
to one a little in front of the boat’s prow as a little sprout and
spray of rays reddening the night’s denseness for nine or ten yards;
nor was there any other light, only an Admiral Colomb lantern in the
hold; and anon Pilcher directed an electric ray upon the compass a
moment.
“We are over the sea, Sir,” he sang out presently; and the Prince
sang back: “I should go pretty slow now, zigzagging north-east and
south-east.”
Their voices noised in the dark like voices calling in song on some orb
where there’s no talking, but only song and moody emotion, the gale
making them musical, the gloom, the restless rain, that sang together
an anthem godlike sad. Though high aloft, they saw not a light in the
sky; vapours fared westward in haste on their way over their heads;
the blast ran brabbling past like the spattering breath of a benzoline
brazing-lamp braying; the midget engine pistoned and spittled, the
little carbons sparking a little anon like the anvil of Thor; and the
redlike spray of rays reigned steadily there in heaven like a Divine
Eye whose ire strikes sightless.
Presently the Prince sang out: “Hear anything odd?”
“No—what like?” Pilcher called.
“The wind too near in your ears perhaps,” the Prince sang out: “to me
distinct, a sound like distant towns. Ask Sturge.”
Pilcher asked down the hatchway, and Sturge sang up: “I know what the
Prince means—hear it every now and again—sort of universal murmur going
on. There may be a hundred thousand of them about.”
“How many do you see, Pilcher?” the Prince called.
Pilcher slipped up his bandage, turned his back to the ray, and,
standing on the steps, called back: “Three in sight for the moment,
Sir. Two astern fifty yards apart, one to starboard two hundred
feet down. I have seen as many as six—we should see hundreds, I
think, on another night. Everything is rather ghastly through the
glasses—livid-like—poor devils.”
A dumbness now among them some moments: until a thump and thud
somewhere was heard, and Sturge, then on the steps glancing abroad,
called out: “Two have bumped, and both gone tumbling, not forty yards
to starboard! I thought there’d be some bumps.”
“Can you see the sea?” sang out the Prince.
“No sign of it here, Sir.” He shut his eyes in trouble, and went down.
“It seems monstrous, sir,” called out Pilcher presently, “that your
warning was disregarded!”
“I doubt if Li Ku Yu fully believed,” the Prince sang back: “he said
once ‘_if_ you have the ray,’ then corrected to ‘_since_ you have’—to
be polite! He may have felt that my warning might possibly be a trick
and last resort. And he probably found himself compelled to make some
attempt with some proportion of the intended numbers. But he is not a
cruel mind.”
“_Hark!_” sang out Pilcher now, and, listening, they could catch a
song-sound like lo, lo, lo, lo, lo, babbled lamentably by some tongue
not far below; then immediately from the east there reached them a
screech which lasted a long while, and died away and away in a lalling
song; and presently after this a pistol-shot from the north-west.
“A suicide, I suppose,” called Pilcher—with probable truth, for very
many were found on the ground with gun-wounds in different districts of
England.
That night it was as if the skies rained a rain of flesh, as well as
wet, not in Eastern England merely, but in the Midlands and West: for
the air-boats still went on and on (until the engines were empty), when
their helmsmen were sightless.
Many of the squads in the boats’ holds appear to have been provided
beforehand with bandages, and been told to look out for the rays, but
were probably blinded before they saw any ray, or properly realised the
possibility of being stricken blind; and of those in holds who escaped
blindness by bandages few probably had any training in the handling of
the boats.
But many thousands (who began to fall high enough) came down without
accident, saved by the parachute-bottom, some of them not blinded; and
with the morning’s dawn in many a home of Southern England was lodged a
Chinaman, sightless or seeing.
The rest crashed shrieking into street or field or river, or, landing
on roofs, slanted and crashed, or stuck in trees.
By midnight England was agaze at this rain, amazed, with a suspicion
of hallelujah and strange new hope springing in its breast, and the
name of a man panting on its breath. In the London window was a face
upturned, spurting feet in her streets. A throng on London Bridge
saw through the rain one air-boat drop upon another, and both drop
upon the gold cross of St Paul’s, and go cracking. Some dropped upon
cabs, carts, and men. Seven in a boat came down safe in the middle of
Southampton Row, and were pounced upon to be roughly handled, until the
astounded crowd found them to be blind, and guided them by the hand
into houses.
Before this, at about ten o’clock, Sir Robert Barrington, on his way
to an interview with Her Majesty, saw, as he stepped out of his house,
a light sinking in the air, waited, watching, and saw it gently sink
to an area rail opposite, on which it tilted, spilling five shrieking
blind Chinamen into the street; and the Queen herself, seated with
screened lights in her Newmarket Parlour, started, hearing their
screams....
And there was yellow still nearer her than they! She did not know all
that was in that room....
She was waiting there by her pear-wood fireplace that had a Lambert
landscape in its carving for Eulalia, whom she had summoned—the
fireplace (in which was a fire that chilly night), being south, the
corridor-door to the Queen’s left, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s
chest a little within the lobby north.
And as Eulalia came to the top of the four steps outside, she seemed
to see on the corridor-door’s rose curtains the firelight shadow of
someone five feet behind the Queen, keenly leaning, stealing toward the
Queen, a knife in hand.
As in she dashed, the shadow vanished; and Her Majesty glanced round,
astonished at her irruption.
“Is Your Majesty alone?” she sharply asked.
“Yes, Miss Bayley. Why?”
Now, the shadow had not been distinct, so, suddenly feeling unsure, and
reluctant to alarm, Eulalia merely answered that she had “seemed to
see” a shadow behind Her Majesty....
“No,” said the Queen. “Sit here.... Now, what is to be done? Ah! you
wear the miniature I gave you! Let me see it?”
Eulalia took it from her neck; handed it to the Queen; the Queen tossed
it into the fire.
“Now, what is to be done? Here we are in the gravest scrape, with
eight or ten indelible disgraces threatening a Throne—You see, do you,
into what a mess of mud many men may be sunk by one young woman’s
unseemly mutiny and misdemeanour? The Prince’s ‘love’ you are! his
‘lucky star’!—_un_lucky. Where he got the audacity—in my—in _my_
presence——What did His Royal Highness mean by calling you his ‘luck’?”
“I think the Prince referred to the black box, Ma’am. I seem to have
brought to His Royal Highness no other luck.” Eulalia was staring
straight into the flame, aware of the raids of wind and rain upon the
window.
“And this black box which you say that you digged up—is it this that
blows people to pieces?”
“I have no knowledge of its properties, Ma’am.”
“It must be this! in which case it is the Princess Elizabeth apparently
who discovered its properties, and it is she who is his luck. She,
poor lady, has been made quite ill by the disgraceful scene, and can
scarcely speak—whether she will continue in the palace now I can’t
say; and, as for me—what _can_ I do? I put it to you. If I send you
away, the Prince seems to have a craving for you—What, by the way,
made you withdraw yourself and hide from him? You have volunteered no
statement——”
“It would be long to explain, Ma’am.”
“It is short to say it would be long.”
“I am like that, Ma’am, I’m afraid: pray forgive me.”
The Queen’s eyes dwelt on her weighingly. Then: “Well, if I send you
away, this very fiery young man calls fire from heaven upon me; if you
stay, no lady in the palace can—_I_ couldn’t, anyway. So what to do?”
“I can fly and hide without your sending me, Ma’am. That is the way
out.”
“_Will_ you do this?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Oh, but you are not bad! You are not bad!”
“_Hark!_”
“What is it?”
“Didn’t Your Majesty hear anything?”
“No. It is the wind.”
“Perhaps.”
“Don’t be nervous. Listen—you shall have another of the miniatures,
though they are precious to me—that one in the sailor-shirt when he was
eighteen—And afterwards we can meet, you and I—and you will think you
see him when you see me——”
“Your Majesty is gracious. I will fly this night, the Prince won’t
find me, and on Wednesday I can use the ticket for America. But on one
condition.”
“Oh, now, that spoils it, a condition. What is the condition?”
“Your Majesty must come to my apartments with me.”
“_I_ must?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“What for?”
“You will see, Ma’am.”
“_Well!_”—the Queen stood up. “But where is—everybody?” she said with
wonder at the door, seeing the corridor desert as death. A small bunch
of lamps above the hangings of the arch beshone its long forlornness.
But as they were going toward the arch, there was someone—a golden
big being from below who bore a card on a salver. The Queen read “Sir
Robert Barrington.”
The next minute Eulalia was saying in her bedroom: “I have dreamt of
being a Queen—and will be one a little. Your Majesty will give me your
diadem and clothes to put on.”
The Queen had a tweak of fun. “While I descend to receive a certain man
who awaits me in a state of—nature? An intensely proper man, too.” She
appealed to heaven.
“I meant that we should change places,” said Eulalia, pale, pale. “I a
Queen, you a nurse.”
“Now, the odd request!”
“It is the condition precedent of my flying.”
“But your real motive?”
“That is my affair, Ma’am.”
The Queen stared. “And if your sleeves are too short for me?”
“Not much, Ma’am.”
“I’ll do it.”
The transformations were made. But now the hairs gave a new air to the
gowns, Eulalia’s a glow of gold and bulky club-head, Her Majesty a
dusky mosque.
Eulalia followed to the door to say: “I—Your Majesty—feel that Your
Majesty should keep your eyes open to-night.... I can’t help thinking
that I saw some shadow.... The Prince of Wales has enemies—perhaps Your
Majesty has, too....”
On this Her Majesty started at some thought, looking into Eulalia’s
face, which of late had flushed at the palace fare, but now afresh was
utterly bereft of colour. She did not say anything, but held out her
hand; Eulalia kissed it; and that was quaint to see the diadem curtsey
and kiss the nurse’s fingers.
And now the Queen went hurriedly, turned back to say hurriedly: “I will
come back: stay in there till someone comes,” and went hurriedly down
the North Stair.
In fact, the shadow caught by Eulalia, though faint, had somehow
brought Oyone into her memory, and also the remembrance of Oyone’s
bitter face cut at the Queen at the cab-door in Chapel Street, East.
She peeped out, saw the corridor still a solitary street, and went
creeping toward the Newmarket Parlour, taking care at the arch to peer
and push the draperies.
Nothing there: but at the top of the four steps her heart started into
her mouth when once more she chanced to catch the vanishing of a shadow.
But she had not been through the war, and through the Chinese, without
learning audacity, so with a dash she was through the curtains, and a
poker was in her hand, she searching the curtains, the furniture, all
eyes and whiteness: for though she had said to herself in changing
clothes with Her Majesty that she didn’t mind dying, her life of no
value, when it came to the point she was inclined to make a fight for
life; and she explored the whole room, the obscure lobby beyond, a
dark apartment beyond that: but did not think of the Chancellor of the
Exchequer’s chest.
Meantime, Her Majesty in a bijou drawing-room below had asked Sir
Robert how she pleased him as a nurse, and why he appeared elated,
to which he had answered: “At this moment, Ma’am, the mastery of the
West over the East is being for ever settled. I believe—if it is not
yet over—that yellow men are now being struck blind by hundreds of
thousands in the air. I have just seen five——”
“_Blind?_” breathed the Queen.
“Am I to take it, Ma’am, that you are not aware that the Prince of
Wales has Mr Chinnery’s Redlike Ray?”
“No.... He is striking them _blind_?”
“I take it that he is.”
“Now, how horrible!”—her eyes shut—“His poor hand is already thicker
than itself with brothers’ blood....”
“Forgive me,” said Sir Robert: “I assumed that Your Majesty would know.”
“No.... I know that he has a black box which blows to pieces.... The
Princess Elizabeth apparently discovered that it had some property
of explosion, then the Prince found it—Can this be the same? No! And
yet—Of course, this ray has no explosive property?”
“Why, no.”
“Is the ray contained in a black box?”
“Yes, Ma’am. You may know that the Prince has long been seeking it,
lately attempted to make one like it, failed....”
“Then, it _is_ the same. How, then, could Elizabeth pretend——?” The
Queen paused, pondering.
Silence. Then Sir Robert, frowning at the floor: “I have besought this
interview of you, Ma’am, under the pressure of a necessity to be frank
as to the Princess Elizabeth. It appears that Her Imperial Highness has
pretended more things than one, and this to the detriment of others. It
has lately, for instance, come to my ears, that Her Imperial Highness
is generally credited at Court with being the donor of the German Six
Millions. Now, I have already had the honour of writing to Your Majesty
the address of that donor; she is poor; I hoped that Your Majesty would
deign——”
“The Princess Elizabeth,” answered Her Majesty emphatically,
“virtually—yes, admitted—that she was the donor. Do you say that you
doubt her?”
“I say so, Ma’am. The fact was not so, believe me. And my reason for
being here is this: that the donor has recently disappeared from her
lodging—I cannot trace her—she treats me ill—but I desire to say
to-night to Your Majesty that it is a matter of national honour and
concern that that royal person should be searched for, and comforted,
Ma’am, for her many adversities.”
At the strong vibration of his voice, Her Majesty’s eyes sprang water
by contagion, her face agitated, pale with indignation—against him, or
against Elizabeth.
“I will see to it,” she said; “and I only hope that you are perfectly
certain of your facts, Sir Robert Barrington, or your tone in referring
to the Prince’s betrothed will be thought improper. Pray tell me afresh
the name and address of the lady in question.”
“I did not tell Your Majesty her name in my letter. As for the address,
she is gone—impossible to guess why or whither—gone—leaving her few
little linens behind—in a soap-box, Ma’am—in a third-floor back-room—in
a slum, Ma’am——”
“Soap-box? _Third floor?_”—wonder was dawning, dawning in her
eyes—“what address?”
“It is 19 Chapel Street, East, Ma’am.”
“Chapel? Yes—19——” She remembered that that was the address whence she
had taken Eulalia; and now there burst from her lips the question: “Is
this donor a nurse?”
“She is, Ma’am.”
“Her name!”
“Eulalia Bayley, Ma’am.”
Her Majesty’s head rested on her chair-back, her lids shut down, and
there was no speech there during some minutes.
“It occurs to me to add,” observed Sir Robert suddenly, “that it was
this same lady who discovered the Prince’s prison. It was not the
Princess Elizabeth at all, as was said. Miss Bayley, having discovered,
came to tell me the address, and the Princess, who was at my place,
certainly heard her. I have to be frank—these are facts. I say that
the Prince of Wales owes his life, the nation at this moment owes its
existence, you your life, Ma’am, I my life, to that young lady of
the slum. I dare to say that, if she were an Aspasia—and she is the
chastest of the angels—still her royal soul would merit to share this
Throne.”
The Queen opened her eyes to say: “I agree as to the ‘royal’; the
‘angel’ I leave to your serener reflection; but I agree, I agree, as to
the royal. She is here, by the way. You shall see her, _looking_ royal,
in my diadem.”
Sir Robert was all astare. “Miss Bayley—_here_?”
“This is her nurse’s costume! I left her—I’ll fetch her to Sir Robert
Barrington’s parental embrace.” She bent her head with an underlook, as
she stood up.
“One word, Ma’am! Does the Prince of Wales know——?”
“Yes, he discovered her, and she had this Redlike Ray: he called her
‘his luck’—no wonder!”
“So all will now be well?—one word!”
“Sir Robert Barrington, take it from me that the Princess of Wales
cannot be a thing of spots and patches so long as I am Queen of
England!” Her Majesty stood at her mighty height smiling at the
universe beneath her chin; and up Sir Robert threw his eyes, as she
moved on and out, bound for Eulalia.
But in the corridor just outside the door she found the Princess
Elizabeth lingering—meek, and ill, and cringing.
“Mother——”
“_Judge!_”
Under that withering look the Princess stood a shrunken thing; but
then, suddenly looking up, said: “I am not ignorant that I have been
maligned to Your Majesty, for ‘quod est mihi suspirat’! but since
ten minutes’ talk would completely clear Your Majesty’s mind of every
misconception——”
“Stay: did you not declare that you had discovered that that box of
Miss Bayley’s had the property of shattering men?”
Pinched now with shame, pain, apprehension, perplexity, the Princess
stood pale, a sinner in the day of his calamity, an irked nerve, like
worms of the deep sea squirming beneath burning beams.
“Yes,” she admitted, “I said that it shatters men.”
“But it strikes blind!”
“Precisely. It shatters the eye.”
“I see!—for it has not shattered mine. But tell me: did not Your
Imperial Highness hear the address of the Prince’s prison from Miss
Bayley at Sir Robert Barrington’s?”
“Yes—I did. I went there foreknowing that I should hear it: as I did.”
“Foreknowing.... And _you_, Elizabeth, were the giver of the Six
Millions, were you? _You_ were that adored donor, complacently
accepting the adoration of men?”
“No. I was _not_ the donor of the Six Millions. I said so! But though I
was _not_ the donor, I _was_, so to say, the donator——”
“The donator.... Oh, Elizabeth, you are a charlatan”—in a voice low and
cold.
Now, desperate, detected, the Princess’s lip whitened with spite. “If
I am a charlatan, is not the world one mass of charlatanism? Hasn’t
society been built upon charlatanism—archbishops, emperors—queens——?”
“What has that to do with _you_? _You_ repent, girl, and strive to make
yourself worthy to be the wife of some pettier man than the Prince of
Wales.”
Blood rushed now to the Princess’s brow, and she was about to vent
something venomous against her love, the Prince, when he himself came
rocking along the corridor in haste, causing the ladies to start at
the Chinaman they thought they saw, at the pigtail swinging behind his
dripping ulster, the hairless skull of paste....
“It is only I,” he called out.... “Well, it’s all over, Mother,
invasion stopped, a new sun to-morrow morning.... I am pretty sick of
it, and sad, God knows, yet glad.... Turned nurse, Mother?... Eulalia
upstairs?”
Her Majesty started! “Let not the Prince of Wales forget that he is in
the presence of ladies!”
“Scott, Mother, let us keep cool,” the Prince wearily said: “to-morrow
morning I start a rational world, so help me, God. But, as you like
rites, Mother, let me tell you to comfort you that that lady has been
Princess of Wales since she was sixteen.”
One looking close would have seen the Queen dodge a little from it; she
then stepped back to stand against the panelling, and suddenly covered
her face with her hands, uttering a sound; the Prince, meantime,
saying: “Elizabeth, forgive.... She ran away on learning that her
husband was the Prince of Wales—public grounds, I suppose, for she’s
very noble-minded—and then I heard that she was dead—had reasons to
believe—forgive! She upstairs?”
Before he could receive an answer, a series of shrieks reached their
ears from afar, screams of one _in extremis_ that seemed to say “_help!
help!_” screams that affected some vein in the Prince to a piteous
sympathy, his face instantly taking on an expression of intense pain,
like one ready to cry. He flew. And, promptly as he flew, the Queen
flew more promptly still ... heart-smitten....
He soon passed her, however; and, on coming near the North Stair, could
hear a press of feet pelting down the second-floor stair above him; one
moment more and Oyone broke white into his sight, a narrow bright knife
in her right hand, bright yet reddened, and three men impending upon
her heels.
He, on dashing to that landing, was just in time to see that one of
the men had caught her up on a landing below, dashing a little past
her: upon which she dodged back sharp, and jumped the balusters to the
bottom, some twenty feet, landing like elastic on her feet; the next
instant she had slipped out of the palace, the men after, the Prince
after them.
But they were still twenty feet off her when she was twenty feet in
air. The Prince saw her boat’s shape rising across the rain, caught a
cry of “_Cranes!_” screamed down from the air, and immediately was away
back into the palace.
But to the other three, lingering a little, a sudden thud sounded
somewhere: for the boat could hardly have been forty feet aloft when it
dropped like a stone; then all was still....
Meantime, the Queen had reached Eulalia through a throng of ladies and
men, to find her still with the diadem on her brow, and with smudges of
blood about her breast, stretched on a couch. Her Majesty stopped short
a yard from the unconscious form, gazing, then, extending her arms,
called out lamentably: “Oh, but greater love hath no man than this!”
and a second later had Eulalia raised in her strong arms, and was away
with her.
Without a sound now, her lips fixed in a vindictive way, she trotted,
brushed past her son in the corridor, did not take Eulalia into
Eulalia’s apartments, but down the North Stair, step by step, heavy
laden like a cat carrying her kitten, down and away to her own
apartments, her own bed.
Feet, meantime, were speeding for the physician, but long ere he got
there Sir Robert and the Prince, who were as good as doctors, had
examined the breast-wound; and then, looking into one another’s eyes,
had smiled.
“Fought like two cats!” said the Prince.
The cuts in Eulalia’s fingers were, indeed, the worst, so that by
midnight she was convalescent, Her Majesty then alone with her in
darkness, their arms enfolded close, culling one another’s roses,
roaming in one another’s country, discovering one another, chuckling at
their delicious riches of love and kissing kinship, the clicking of the
clock not more constant than their talk that lasted on and on into the
dawn of morning.
The Queen, discovering the ring hung round the neck, said: “So this is
the wedding-ring!”
“That’s where I’ve always kept it!”—Eulalia laughed.
“But what a pair of pirates! Who could divine...? You were only
sixteen?”
“Hardly more. Before I knew anything he had me off my feet.”
“Say crushingly defeated.”
“_Yes!_ Ah, if I could only say those sorts of flashing swift things
like you!—you’d think more of me.”
Her Majesty held her hot and close. “Could I, sweetheart? I doubt it.”
“Tell me the _truth_: do you love me _a lot_?”
“Couldn’t you _see_—from the first? Sweet as honey! I have longed for a
daughter-sister, and to think it should be you, you!... You’ll make the
fairiest, silver-slipperedest, finest, whitest Princess of Wales that
ever yet was! I’ll be like an air-boat bathing in the sunlight of your
hair and flying about in the sky of your eyes! But I do abhor a woman
who throws away the severity and thorn without which there’s no rose of
womanhood, or preservation of a nation. So I had to try to dislike you,
feeling you sweet in my liver, but never dreaming half your sweetness
and high royalty—forgive—I humble myself—kiss.”
“You make love something like him!” said Eulalia.
“Do I? Is he nice as a lover?”
“Aha—electric-like. But it is said that you are fickle: if ever you
leave off loving me, I shall just die, or if you regret that I am not
royal, or about Germany.”
“I sha’n’t. The Prince of Wales has authority and prestige enough now
to marry Sally-in-the-alley—if she be vestal. He can make Germany an
English Crown-colony, if he likes. Don’t be afraid of that. If I am
fickle, it is only to pretty dummies, not to real people. Ah! where you
got the audacity this night—if you had got yourself killed for me——”
“Oh, I was wide awake! I seemed to recognise the shadow’s face—She was
wonderfully lovely——”
No longer!—as the morning then dawning into the apartment revealed
to three men in the Palace Park, who found the little scout dead on
the ground, and Oyone still sitting, stiff and cold, at the boat’s
hatchway, her hand on the ratchet-lever, her right eye, at the shock,
having shot half out of the socket, her hard hat cocked awry....