The Lady of the Mantilla
Since that first night I had never clapped eyes on Sandy. He had gone
clean out of the world, and Blenkiron and I waited anxiously for a word
of news. Our own business was in good trim, for we were presently going
east towards Mesopotamia, but unless we learned more about Greenmantle
our journey would be a grotesque failure. And learn about Greenmantle
we could not, for nobody by word or deed suggested his existence, and
it was impossible of course for us to ask questions. Our only hope was
Sandy, for what we wanted to know was the prophet’s whereabouts and his
plans. I suggested to Blenkiron that we might do more to cultivate Frau
von Einem, but he shut his jaw like a rat-trap.
“There’s nothing doing for us in that quarter,” he said. “That’s the
most dangerous woman on earth; and if she got any kind of notion that
we were wise about her pet schemes I reckon you and I would very soon
be in the Bosporus.”
This was all very well; but what was going to happen if the two of us
were bundled off to Baghdad with instructions to wash away the British?
Our time was getting pretty short, and I doubted if we could spin out
more than three days more in Constantinople. I felt just as I had felt
with Stumm that last night when I was about to be packed off to Cairo
and saw no way of avoiding it. Even Blenkiron was getting anxious. He
played Patience incessantly, and was disinclined to talk. I tried to
find out something from the servants, but they either knew nothing or
wouldn’t speak—the former, I think. I kept my eyes lifting, too, as I
walked about the streets, but there was no sign anywhere of the skin
coats or the weird stringed instruments. The whole Company of the Rosy
Hours seemed to have melted into the air, and I began to wonder if they
had ever existed.
Anxiety made me restless, and restlessness made me want exercise. It
was no good walking about the city. The weather had become foul again,
and I was sick of the smells and the squalor and the flea-bitten
crowds. So Blenkiron and I got horses, Turkish cavalry mounts with
heads like trees, and went out through the suburbs into the open
country.
It was a grey drizzling afternoon, with the beginnings of a sea fog
which hid the Asiatic shores of the straits. It wasn’t easy to find
open ground for a gallop, for there were endless small patches of
cultivation and the gardens of country houses. We kept on the high land
above the sea, and when we reached a bit of downland came on squads of
Turkish soldiers digging trenches. Whenever we let the horses go we had
to pull up sharp for a digging party or a stretch of barbed wire. Coils
of the beastly thing were lying loose everywhere, and Blenkiron nearly
took a nasty toss over one. Then we were always being stopped by
sentries and having to show our passes. Still the ride did us good and
shook up our livers, and by the time we turned for home I was feeling
more like a white man.
We jogged back in the short winter twilight, past the wooded grounds of
white villas, held up every few minutes by transport-wagons and
companies of soldiers. The rain had come on in real earnest, and it was
two very bedraggled horsemen that crawled along the muddy lanes. As we
passed one villa, shut in by a high white wall, a pleasant smell of
wood smoke was wafted towards us, which made me sick for the burning
veld. My ear, too, caught the twanging of a zither, which somehow
reminded me of the afternoon in Kuprasso’s garden-house.
I pulled up and proposed to investigate, but Blenkiron very testily
declined.
“Zithers are as common here as fleas,” he said. “You don’t want to be
fossicking around somebody’s stables and find a horse-boy entertaining
his friends. They don’t like visitors in this country; and you’ll be
asking for trouble if you go inside those walls. I guess it’s some old
Buzzard’s harem.” Buzzard was his own private peculiar name for the
Turk, for he said he had had as a boy a natural history book with a
picture of a bird called the turkey-buzzard, and couldn’t get out of
the habit of applying it to the Ottoman people.
I wasn’t convinced, so I tried to mark down the place. It seemed to be
about three miles out from the city, at the end of a steep lane on the
inland side of the hill coming from the Bosporus. I fancied somebody of
distinction lived there, for a little farther on we met a big empty
motor-car snorting its way up, and I had a notion that the car belonged
to the walled villa.
Next day Blenkiron was in grievous trouble with his dyspepsia. About
midday he was compelled to lie down, and having nothing better to do I
had out the horses again and took Peter with me. It was funny to see
Peter in a Turkish army-saddle, riding with the long Boer stirrup and
the slouch of the backveld.
That afternoon was unfortunate from the start. It was not the mist and
drizzle of the day before, but a stiff northern gale which blew sheets
of rain in our faces and numbed our bridle hands. We took the same
road, but pushed west of the trench-digging parties and got to a
shallow valley with a white village among the cypresses. Beyond that
there was a very respectable road which brought us to the top of a
crest that in clear weather must have given a fine prospect. Then we
turned our horses, and I shaped our course so as to strike the top of
the long lane that abutted on the down. I wanted to investigate the
white villa.
But we hadn’t gone far on our road back before we got into trouble. It
arose out of a sheep-dog, a yellow mongrel brute that came at us like a
thunderbolt. It took a special fancy to Peter, and bit savagely at his
horse’s heels and sent it capering off the road. I should have warned
him, but I did not realize what was happening, till too late. For
Peter, being accustomed to mongrels in Kaffir kraals, took a summary
way with the pest. Since it despised his whip, he out with his pistol
and put a bullet through its head.
The echoes of the shot had scarcely died away when the row began. A big
fellow appeared running towards us, shouting wildly. I guessed he was
the dog’s owner, and proposed to pay no attention. But his cries
summoned two other fellows—soldiers by the look of them—who closed in
on us, unslinging their rifles as they ran. My first idea was to show
them our heels, but I had no desire to be shot in the back, and they
looked like men who wouldn’t stop short of shooting. So we slowed down
and faced them.
They made as savage-looking a trio as you would want to avoid. The
shepherd looked as if he had been dug up, a dirty ruffian with matted
hair and a beard like a bird’s nest. The two soldiers stood staring
with sullen faces, fingering their guns, while the other chap raved and
stormed and kept pointing at Peter, whose mild eyes stared unwinkingly
at his assailant.
The mischief was that neither of us had a word of Turkish. I tried
German, but it had no effect. We sat looking at them and they stood
storming at us, and it was fast getting dark. Once I turned my horse
round as if to proceed, and the two soldiers jumped in front of me.
They jabbered among themselves, and then one said very slowly: “He ...
want ... pounds,” and he held up five fingers. They evidently saw by
the cut of our jib that we weren’t Germans.
“I’ll be hanged if he gets a penny,” I said angrily, and the
conversation languished.
The situation was getting serious, so I spoke a word to Peter. The
soldiers had their rifles loose in their hands, and before they could
lift them we had the pair covered with our pistols.
“If you move,” I said, “you are dead.” They understood that all right
and stood stock still, while the shepherd stopped his raving and took
to muttering like a gramophone when the record is finished.
“Drop your guns,” I said sharply. “Quick, or we shoot.”
The tone, if not the words, conveyed my meaning. Still staring at us,
they let the rifles slide to the ground. The next second we had forced
our horses on the top of them, and the three were off like rabbits. I
sent a shot over their heads to encourage them. Peter dismounted and
tossed the guns into a bit of scrub where they would take some finding.
This hold-up had wasted time. By now it was getting very dark, and we
hadn’t ridden a mile before it was black night. It was an annoying
predicament, for I had completely lost my bearings and at the best I
had only a foggy notion of the lie of the land. The best plan seemed to
be to try and get to the top of a rise in the hope of seeing the lights
of the city, but all the countryside was so pockety that it was hard to
strike the right kind of rise.
We had to trust to Peter’s instinct. I asked him where our line lay,
and he sat very still for a minute sniffing the air. Then he pointed
the direction. It wasn’t what I would have taken myself, but on a point
like that he was pretty near infallible.
Presently we came to a long slope which cheered me. But at the top
there was no light visible anywhere—only a black void like the inside
of a shell. As I stared into the gloom it seemed to me that there were
patches of deeper darkness that might be woods.
“There is a house half-left in front of us,” said Peter.
I peered till my eyes ached and saw nothing.
“Well, for heaven’s sake, guide me to it,” I said, and with Peter in
front we set off down the hill.
It was a wild journey, for darkness clung as close to us as a vest.
Twice we stepped into patches of bog, and once my horse saved himself
by a hair from going head forward into a gravel pit. We got tangled up
in strands of wire, and often found ourselves rubbing our noses against
tree trunks. Several times I had to get down and make a gap in
barricades of loose stones. But after a ridiculous amount of slipping
and stumbling we finally struck what seemed the level of a road, and a
piece of special darkness in front which turned out to be a high wall.
I argued that all mortal walls had doors, so we set to groping along
it, and presently found a gap. There was an old iron gate on broken
hinges, which we easily pushed open, and found ourselves on a back path
to some house. It was clearly disused, for masses of rotting leaves
covered it, and by the feel of it underfoot it was grass-grown.
We dismounted now, leading our horses, and after about fifty yards the
path ceased and came out on a well-made carriage drive. So, at least,
we guessed, for the place was as black as pitch. Evidently the house
couldn’t be far off, but in which direction I hadn’t a notion.
Now, I didn’t want to be paying calls on any Turk at that time of day.
Our job was to find where the road opened into the lane, for after that
our way to Constantinople was clear. One side the lane lay, and the
other the house, and it didn’t seem wise to take the risk of tramping
up with horses to the front door. So I told Peter to wait for me at the
end of the back-road, while I would prospect a bit. I turned to the
right, my intention being if I saw the light of a house to return, and
with Peter take the other direction.
I walked like a blind man in that nether-pit of darkness. The road
seemed well kept, and the soft wet gravel muffled the sounds of my
feet. Great trees overhung it, and several times I wandered into
dripping bushes. And then I stopped short in my tracks, for I heard the
sound of whistling.
It was quite close, about ten yards away. And the strange thing was
that it was a tune I knew, about the last tune you would expect to hear
in this part of the world. It was the Scots air: “Ca’ the yowes to the
knowes,” which was a favourite of my father’s.
The whistler must have felt my presence, for the air suddenly stopped
in the middle of a bar. An unbounded curiosity seized me to know who
the fellow could be. So I started in and finished it myself.
There was silence for a second, and then the unknown began again and
stopped. Once more I chipped in and finished it. Then it seemed to me
that he was coming nearer. The air in that dank tunnel was very still,
and I thought I heard a light foot. I think I took a step backward.
Suddenly there was a flash of an electric torch from a yard off, so
quick that I could see nothing of the man who held it.
Then a low voice spoke out of the darkness—a voice I knew well—and,
following it, a hand was laid on my arm. “What the devil are you doing
here, Dick?” it said, and there was something like consternation in the
tone.
I told him in a hectic sentence, for I was beginning to feel badly
rattled myself.
“You’ve never been in greater danger in your life,” said the voice.
“Great God, man, what brought you wandering here today of all days?”
You can imagine that I was pretty scared, for Sandy was the last man to
put a case too high. And the next second I felt worse, for he clutched
my arm and dragged me in a bound to the side of the road. I could see
nothing, but I felt that his head was screwed round, and mine followed
suit. And there, a dozen yards off, were the acetylene lights of a big
motor-car.
It came along very slowly, purring like a great cat, while we pressed
into the bushes. The headlights seemed to spread a fan far to either
side, showing the full width of the drive and its borders, and about
half the height of the over-arching trees. There was a figure in
uniform sitting beside the chauffeur, whom I saw dimly in the reflex
glow, but the body of the car was dark.
It crept towards us, passed, and my mind was just getting easy again
when it stopped. A switch was snapped within, and the limousine was
brightly lit up. Inside I saw a woman’s figure.
The servant had got out and opened the door and a voice came from
within—a clear soft voice speaking in some tongue I didn’t understand.
Sandy had started forward at the sound of it, and I followed him. It
would never do for me to be caught skulking in the bushes.
I was so dazzled by the suddenness of the glare that at first I blinked
and saw nothing. Then my eyes cleared and I found myself looking at the
inside of a car upholstered in some soft dove-coloured fabric, and
beautifully finished off in ivory and silver. The woman who sat in it
had a mantilla of black lace over her head and shoulders, and with one
slender jewelled hand she kept its fold over the greater part of her
face. I saw only a pair of pale grey-blue eyes—these and the slim
fingers.
I remember that Sandy was standing very upright with his hands on his
hips, by no means like a servant in the presence of his mistress. He
was a fine figure of a man at all times, but in those wild clothes,
with his head thrown back and his dark brows drawn below his skull-cap,
he looked like some savage king out of an older world. He was speaking
Turkish, and glancing at me now and then as if angry and perplexed. I
took the hint that he was not supposed to know any other tongue, and
that he was asking who the devil I might be.
Then they both looked at me, Sandy with the slow unwinking stare of the
gipsy, the lady with those curious, beautiful pale eyes. They ran over
my clothes, my brand-new riding-breeches, my splashed boots, my
wide-brimmed hat. I took off the last and made my best bow.
“Madam,” I said, “I have to ask pardon for trespassing in your garden.
The fact is, I and my servant—he’s down the road with the horses and I
guess you noticed him—the two of us went for a ride this afternoon, and
got good and well lost. We came in by your back gate, and I was
prospecting for your front door to find someone to direct us, when I
bumped into this brigand-chief who didn’t understand my talk. I’m
American, and I’m here on a big Government proposition. I hate to
trouble you, but if you’d send a man to show us how to strike the city
I’d be very much in your debt.”
Her eyes never left my face. “Will you come into the car?” she said in
English. “At the house I will give you a servant to direct you.”
She drew in the skirts of her fur cloak to make room for me, and in my
muddy boots and sopping clothes I took the seat she pointed out. She
said a word in Turkish to Sandy, switched off the light, and the car
moved on.
Women had never come much my way, and I knew about as much of their
ways as I knew about the Chinese language. All my life I had lived with
men only, and rather a rough crowd at that. When I made my pile and
came home I looked to see a little society, but I had first the
business of the Black Stone on my hands, and then the war, so my
education languished. I had never been in a motor-car with a lady
before, and I felt like a fish on a dry sandbank. The soft cushions and
the subtle scents filled me with acute uneasiness. I wasn’t thinking
now about Sandy’s grave words, or about Blenkiron’s warning, or about
my job and the part this woman must play in it. I was thinking only
that I felt mortally shy. The darkness made it worse. I was sure that
my companion was looking at me all the time and laughing at me for a
clown.
The car stopped and a tall servant opened the door. The lady was over
the threshold before I was at the step. I followed her heavily, the wet
squelching from my field-boots. At that moment I noticed that she was
very tall.
She led me through a long corridor to a room where two pillars held
lamps in the shape of torches. The place was dark but for their glow,
and it was as warm as a hothouse from invisible stoves. I felt soft
carpets underfoot, and on the walls hung some tapestry or rug of an
amazingly intricate geometrical pattern, but with every strand as rich
as jewels. There, between the pillars, she turned and faced me. Her
furs were thrown back, and the black mantilla had slipped down to her
shoulders.
“I have heard of you,” she said. “You are called Richard Hanau, the
American. Why have you come to this land?”
“To have a share in the campaign,” I said. “I’m an engineer, and I
thought I could help out with some business like Mesopotamia.”
“You are on Germany’s side?” she asked.
“Why, yes,” I replied. “We Americans are supposed to be nootrals, and
that means we’re free to choose any side we fancy. I’m for the Kaiser.”
Her cool eyes searched me, but not in suspicion. I could see she wasn’t
troubling with the question whether I was speaking the truth. She was
sizing me up as a man. I cannot describe that calm appraising look.
There was no sex in it, nothing even of that implicit sympathy with
which one human being explores the existence of another. I was a
chattel, a thing infinitely removed from intimacy. Even so I have
myself looked at a horse which I thought of buying, scanning his
shoulders and hocks and paces. Even so must the old lords of
Constantinople have looked at the slaves which the chances of war
brought to their markets, assessing their usefulness for some task or
other with no thought of a humanity common to purchased and purchaser.
And yet—not quite. This woman’s eyes were weighing me, not for any
special duty, but for my essential qualities. I felt that I was under
the scrutiny of one who was a connoisseur in human nature.
I see I have written that I knew nothing about women. But every man has
in his bones a consciousness of sex. I was shy and perturbed, but
horribly fascinated. This slim woman, poised exquisitely like some
statue between the pillared lights, with her fair cloud of hair, her
long delicate face, and her pale bright eyes, had the glamour of a wild
dream. I hated her instinctively, hated her intensely, but I longed to
arouse her interest. To be valued coldly by those eyes was an offence
to my manhood, and I felt antagonism rising within me. I am a strong
fellow, well set up, and rather above the average height, and my
irritation stiffened me from heel to crown. I flung my head back and
gave her cool glance for cool glance, pride against pride.
Once, I remember, a doctor on board ship who dabbled in hypnotism told
me that I was the most unsympathetic person he had ever struck. He said
I was about as good a mesmeric subject as Table Mountain. Suddenly I
began to realize that this woman was trying to cast some spell over me.
The eyes grew large and luminous, and I was conscious for just an
instant of some will battling to subject mine. I was aware, too, in the
same moment of a strange scent which recalled that wild hour in
Kuprasso’s garden-house. It passed quickly, and for a second her eyes
drooped. I seemed to read in them failure, and yet a kind of
satisfaction, too, as if they had found more in me than they expected.
“What life have you led?” the soft voice was saying.
I was able to answer quite naturally, rather to my surprise. “I have
been a mining engineer up and down the world.”
“You have faced danger many times?”
“I have faced danger.”
“You have fought with men in battles?”
“I have fought in battles.”
Her bosom rose and fell in a kind of sigh. A smile—a very beautiful
thing—flitted over her face. She gave me her hand. “The horses are at
the door now,” she said, “and your servant is with them. One of my
people will guide you to the city.”
She turned away and passed out of the circle of light into the darkness
beyond ...
Peter and I jogged home in the rain with one of Sandy’s skin-clad
Companions loping at our side. We did not speak a word, for my thoughts
were running like hounds on the track of the past hours. I had seen the
mysterious Hilda von Einem, I had spoken to her, I had held her hand.
She had insulted me with the subtlest of insults and yet I was not
angry. Suddenly the game I was playing became invested with a
tremendous solemnity. My old antagonists, Stumm and Rasta and the whole
German Empire, seemed to shrink into the background, leaving only the
slim woman with her inscrutable smile and devouring eyes. “Mad and
bad,” Blenkiron had called her, “but principally bad.” I did not think
they were the proper terms, for they belonged to the narrow world of
our common experience. This was something beyond and above it, as a
cyclone or an earthquake is outside the decent routine of nature. Mad
and bad she might be, but she was also great.
Before we arrived our guide had plucked my knee and spoken some words
which he had obviously got by heart. “The Master says,” ran the
message, “expect him at midnight.”