When in the early morning I drove into Downing Street and entered the
office of the chief of the night staff, I was informed that the Marquess
of Malvern was in town; therefore I drove on to Belgrave Square.
The Prime Minister's house was a large, old-fashioned,
substantial-looking mansion, devoid of any outward show or
embellishment, and with very little attempt at ornamentation in the
interior. Everything was solid and good, but long out of date. The
gimcrack painted deal abominations, miscalled art-furniture, had not
been invented in the day when the town house of the great family had
been renovated in honour of the marriage of the fourth Marquess, the
present Prime Minister's grandfather, and very little had been altered
by the two generations who had succeeded him. The time-mellowed
stability of the place was one of its greatest charms. The footman led
me upstairs through the great reception-room which every foreign
diplomatist in London knows so well, where the furniture was at present
hidden beneath holland shrouds, and down a long corridor, till we found
the valet, who, in obedience to the strict orders of his master, went
and awakened him. The Marquess, attentive to the affairs of State by
night as well as by day, was always awakened on the arrival of a crossed
despatch from any of Britain's representatives at the Foreign Courts.
"His lordship will see you in his dressing-room in a few moments, sir,"
the valet said when he returned, as he ushered me into a small room
close at hand.
I had sat there before on previous occasions when I had been the bearer
of secret reports from my Chief. I had only to wait a few moments, and
the great statesman--a tall, thin, grave-faced gentleman, wrapped in his
dressing-gown, opened the door and stood before me.
"Good-morning, Mr. Ingram!" he exclaimed affably; for to all the staff
of the Foreign Office, from ambassador down to the lower-grade clerk,
the Marquess was equally courteous, and often gave a word of encouraging
approval from his own lips. Many times had he been heard to say, "Each
of us work for our country's good. There must be neither jealousy nor
pride among us." The esprit de corps in the Foreign Office is well
known.
I bowed, apologised for disturbing him at that early hour--it was
half-past five--and handed him the despatch.
"You've been travelling while I've been sleeping," laughed the director
of England's foreign policy, taking the envelope and examining the seals
to assure himself they were intact. Then he scrawled his signature upon
the receipt which I handed him, tore open the envelope, and glanced at
the cipher.
"Have you any idea of the contents of this?" he inquired.
"No, it is secret. Lord Barmouth wrote it himself."
"Then kindly come this way;" and he led me down a long corridor to a
large room at the end--his library. From the safe he took his
decipher-book, and after a few minutes had transcribed the despatch into
plain English.
I saw from his face that what he read was somewhat displeasing, and also
that he was considerably surprised by the news it contained. He re-read
the lines he had written, twisting his watch-guard nervously within his
thin white fingers. Then he said:
"It seems, Ingram, that you have some extremely difficult diplomacy in
Paris just now--extremely difficult and often annoying?"
"Yes," I said, "there are several problems of late that have required
great tact and finesse. But we at the Embassy have the utmost
confidence in our Chief."
"Lord Barmouth is a man of whom England may justly be proud. Would that
there were many more like him in our service!" said the Prime Minister.
"Kindly ask him to keep me posted constantly regarding the progress of
the matter he has just reported. It is serious, and may necessitate
some drastic change of policy. It is for that reason that I wish to be
kept informed."
"Do you require me to return to my post to-day?"
"Certainly not," he replied quickly. "Now you are in England you may
remain a couple of days or so, if you wish. I am well aware how all of
you long for a day or two at home."
I thanked his lordship; and then, after a short and pleasant chat upon
the political situation in Paris and the mystery regarding Ceuta, I went
out, mounted into my cab, and drove down to the St. James' Club, where I
made myself tidy, and breakfasted.
When I had finished my second cup of tea and glanced through the morning
paper, eight o'clock was striking. I rose, went to the window, and
looked out upon Piccadilly, bright and brilliant in the morning sun.
With hands in my pockets I stood debating whether I should act upon a
suggestion that had been constantly in my mind ever since leaving Paris.
Should I take Edith by surprise, and go down to visit her?
The fact that the Marquess had given me leave so readily showed that the
outlook had become clearer, notwithstanding the fact that my Chief had
transmitted, for the eye of the Foreign Minister only, the secret
despatch of which I had been the bearer.
At that early hour there was no one in the club, yet as I wandered
through those well-remembered rooms my mind became filled with pleasant
recollections of merry hours spent there in the days before my duty
compelled me to become an exile abroad. I thought of Yolande, and tried
to decide whether or no I really loved her. A vision of her face arose
before my eyes, but with a strenuous effort I succeeded in shutting it
out. All was of the past. Besides, had not Kaye proved her to be a
secret agent, or, to put it plainly, a spy? Daily, hourly, I had
struggled with my conscience. In the performance of what was plainly my
duty I had visited her, and had nearly fallen into the trap she had so
cunningly baited, for she no doubt intended, after all, to become my
wife; and in this she was acting, I felt confident, in concert with that
man who was my bitterest enemy--the man who now called himself Rodolphe
Wolf. No, I had treated Edith unfairly, and therefore resolved to run
down to Norfolk and visit her. With that object, an hour later I left
London for Great Ryburgh, the small village where she delighted to live
reposeful days in company with her maiden aunt, Miss Henrietta Foskett.
In due course I arrived by the express at Fakenham, drove in a fly to
the quiet little village, and descended before the large, low, roomy old
house with mullioned windows and tall chimneys, which lay back from the
village street behind a garden filled with those old-world,
sweet-smelling flowers so much beloved by our grandmothers.
I walked up the garden-path, knocked, and was admitted by the neat maid,
Ann, who for fifteen years had been in Miss Foskett's service.
It has always seemed to me that except by their immediate heirs, maiden
aunts are often nearly forgotten among a bustling younger generation
always striving and toiling. They are left to dust their own china and
sharply to superintend the morals and manners of their general servant,
save when the holiday-times of the year come round, when their country
houses are more apt to recur to their relatives' minds; their periodical
letters, in the delicate pointed Italian hand, essential in the days of
their youth as the hall-mark of gentility, are then more eagerly replied
to, for Aunt Jane's or Aunt Maria's proffered hospitality will generally
furnish an economical change of air.
Edith's case was not an unusual one. Her father, a wealthy landowner in
Northumberland, had died in her youth, while five years ago, just before
she left college at St. Leonard's, her mother, who was constantly
ailing, also succumbed. She was left entirely alone; but she had
succeeded to a handsome income, derived from property in the city of
Newcastle. Her Aunt Henrietta, her mother's only surviving sister, had
constituted herself her guardian. Miss Foskett had been able through
stress and change to cling to the old house--the old place, once so
full, from which so many had gone out to return no more.
I knew that interior well. There was a haunting sense of pathos in
those old rooms, and the ancient furniture was arranged in unyielding
precision.
When Ann ushered me into the musty-smelling drawing-room, I glanced
round and shuddered. Aunt Henrietta's rules were the household rules of
her mother before her, and she severely reprobated the domestic
slackness and craving for mere comfort and luxury of the present
generation. Her lace curtains, carefully dressed, were hung up, and
fires banished from all her fireplaces, on the first of May. Untimely
frost and snow had no power to move the prim old wool-work screen,
glazed and framed, that hid the steel bars of the grate; the simpering
ladies, in their faded blue and scarlet dresses, looked
unsympathetically at the light carpet, the white curtains, the
anti-macassared armchairs, the round table with books, miniatures, and a
flowering plant, whatever the state of the thermometer.
Through the windows a pleasant vista was presented across a well-kept
lawn with broad pasture-lands beyond, and the spire of Testerton church
rising in the distance behind the belt of trees. While I sat there
awaiting Edith, who was no doubt amazed at the announcement of my
presence, and was now rearranging her hair, as women will, I glanced up
at the feeble watercolours and chalk drawings traced by the hand of
"dear Aunt Fanny, who had a wonderful talent for drawing." It occurred
to me that Fanny's great-nieces, with perhaps less artistic excuse, now
studied at the Slade, copied at the National Gallery, and lived in flats
with some feminine friend on tea and pickles. Such girls give lunches
and teas to stray bachelors, and own a latchkey. But such doings could
hardly be thought of among Fanny's muddled trees and impossible sunsets,
with Fanny's pictured eyes smiling sweetly, if a trifle inanely, from
behind her bunches of fair, hanging curls, at grandmother's mild face
and folded hands on the opposite wall.
Notwithstanding the inartistic character of the place, there was
everywhere a tranquillity and an old-world charm. Through the open
window came the scent of the flowers, the hum of insects in the noonday
sun, and the call of the birds. How different was the life there from
my own turbulent existence in the glare and glitter of the gayest circle
in Paris! I sighed, and longed for quiet and rest at home in dear old
rural England.
Suddenly the door opened, and Aunt Henrietta, a prim, shrunken,
thin-faced old lady in stiff black silk, and wearing a cap of cream
lace, came forward to greet me.
"Why, you have taken us entirely by surprise, Mr. Ingram!" she said in
her high-pitched voice. "When Ann told me that it was you, I would
scarcely believe her. We thought you were in Paris."
"I had to come to London on business, so I thought I would run down to
see how you all are," I answered. "I hope my visit is not
inconvenient?"
"Oh no," answered the old lady. "I've told Edith, and she will be down
in a moment. She's been worrying for the past week because she has
received no letter from you."
"Well, I've come personally, Miss Foskett," I laughed. "I hope my
presence will partly make up for my failure as a correspondent."
Her grey, wizened face puckered into a smile. I knew that she had not
altogether approved of Edith becoming engaged to me. But her niece was
of age, mistress of her fortune, and, I shrewdly suspected, contributed
handsomely towards the expenses of that small, prim household.
Although Aunt Hetty was of a somewhat trenchant type, and shook her head
over the wilful vagaries of a world that had outgrown her philosophy of
life, yet she still preserved a motherly instinct of patient love for
all mankind. She was, in common with most maiden aunts, a great
church-goer and firm supporter of the parish clergy of Great Ryburgh;
but in parochial matters I believe she was more dreaded than loved for
the uncompromising force of her doctrine and demeanour. She was severe
on the faults and failings of her inferiors, and apt to discriminate in
her almsgiving. Frequent curtseys and a little adroit flattery from
"the poor" were a surer road to her purse than morose merit, however
great.
The old lady straightened out an antimacassar that chanced to be a
trifle awry, then, spreading out her skirts slowly, seated herself, and
began to relate to me gossip concerning people whom I knew in the
neighbourhood--the squire, the doctor, the parson, and other local
worthies, all of whom, taken together, made up her quiet little world.
At last the door opened again, and next instant, as I sprang up, I
became conscious of a fair vision in a simple white gown standing before
me. The touch of her soft, tiny hand, the love-glance of those
beautiful eyes, the glad smile of welcome, the music of that voice, came
upon me as a sudden revelation. Her perfect type of English loveliness
became disclosed to me for the first time. She was absolutely
incomparable, although never before that moment had I realised the
truth. But in that instant I became aware that she held me irrevocably
beneath her spell.
I took her hand, and our eyes met. My gaze wavered beneath hers, and
what words I uttered in response to her greeting I cannot tell. All
that I knew was that I was unworthy of her love.