About noon the next day a couple of porters stood waiting for the
service-lift at the Royal Palace hotel. Each man had a sole-leather
trunk on his shoulder, a trunk so new that the initialing "G. V. S." was
still wet. It was something else which halted Napier in the act of
sending up his card to Miss Ellis, a glimpse of Singleton's face behind
an outspread newspaper.
"Cabs full of stuff keep coming," was the gentleman's _sotto voce_
comment.
Napier wondered drily that anybody should expect to get the stuff out of
England.
"Personal wardrobe. Member of household of cabinet minister. Special
privileges. And nobody knows better that avoidance of publicity is worth
thousands of pounds to Sir William and, I daresay, to the Government.
She's playing it for all she's worth. She's got this Mr. Julian Grant in
her pocket, too. He's up with her now."
The lift came down with Nan. She made a little hurried bow, and was for
escaping. Napier stood there in front of her.
"Just a minute."
"I can't; I'm sorry. I haven't _got_ a minute."
"Yes, you have," he said bitterly, "when I tell you it's about Miss
Greta's affairs."
"Oh, about Greta--"
The face was whiter, more transparent, than he had ever seen it.
"You don't look as if you'd had a wink of sleep."
Although Singleton had vanished, Nan showed little disposition to
linger. As Napier stood there, looking down at the face alight with
fidelity and eager service, he knew in his soul he was thankful there
wasn't time, nor this the place, to wring her heart with the disgraceful
truth about her friend. The last thing he expected to say was the first
to come out.
"A ... you don't gather, I suppose, that Miss Greta is at all harassed
about money?"
"It is kind of you to think that!" She smiled at him. "The fact is,
Greta--that is, I _did_ cable home last night. I am going back to the
bank now, to see if they've heard."
Napier arrested her slight movement. "Just let me understand. Do you
mean that you've overdrawn your account?"
"Oh, not overdrawn. But the gold I got this morning just finished it. I
seem to have needed a good deal of money lately, one way and another."
"You got gold this morning, you say?"
"Yes; wasn't it lucky? Greta has a prejudice against paper money. She
thinks it unsanitary."
"Oh, I see. And you were able to give her all she needs--of the sanitary
sort?"
"No. I could get only sixty pounds."
"Not in gold?"
"Forty in sovereigns, twenty in half-sovereigns."
"You were uncommon lucky; but Miss Greta will have to give you back
that sixty pounds, or the inspector will take it away at the station."
"Oh, surely not!"
"Beyond a doubt. They don't allow more than twenty pounds to be taken
out of the country, and that mustn't be in gold."
She stared. "What do people do who have hundreds of pounds in your
banks?"
"They have to leave it behind till the end of the war."
"Not Americans?"
Nobody, he said significantly, would be allowed to carry English gold to
Germany.
Gravely, for a moment, she considered the astonishing statement.
"Heavens, the time!" Her eyes over his shoulder had found the clock.
"Only a little after twelve." He didn't stir from the stand he'd taken
in front of her.
"You don't realize how much there is to do," she pleaded. Then, as he
stood there so immovable, she made the best of it. "I believe, after
all, I'll tell you."
"Better," he agreed.
"Well, only half an hour ago we decided Greta couldn't go alone. I'm
going with her."
All his life he would remember what he went through in those next
seconds.
"Julian,"--she threw in with a hurried glance at Napier's face--"Julian
thinks it will be all right."
"You imagine you'll be allowed to go?" Napier said, with infinitely more
firmness than he felt.
"Who would try to prevent?"
"Maybe your own embassy."
"Oh, _the embassy_!"
"It couldn't be anything but very unpleasant in Germany just now."
"Not for an American," she said.
"Even an American," he replied with an edge in his voice, "who has
already overdrawn at the bankers' and whose cable can't, I should say,
be answered in time."
A teasing, tricksy expression put her burdened seriousness to flight.
"Of course I know, if I asked you, _you'd_ lend me what I need."
"To go to Germany?"
"Well, wouldn't you?"
"No."
She smiled. A secret rapture escaped out of her eyes. "You wouldn't?"
And then she seemed to put him to some test. "Julian is kinder."
"That's as it should be," he said.
She made a little harassed movement. "I must manage somehow. Julian's
going to get my ticket. He's telephoning about all that now. But Greta
wouldn't like me to ask Julian for a loan for _her_."
Napier glanced at the clock. There was still, thank Heaven, the passport
difficulty. He scribbled a line on a card. All that was really essential
was to make Julian abandon his efforts to remove the obstacles, and Nan
would be spared what couldn't fail to be a horrible shock. His aching
tenderness for the girl asked why she should _ever_ know the truth
unless, indeed, Greta von Schwarzenberg should succeed in carrying off
the goose that laid the golden eggs. By all the gods, he must prevent
that!
Eagerly she had watched him writing, and now she gave her own
interpretation to the card Napier despatched upstairs. "It _is_ kind of
you to come and see if you can help us. But you oughtn't to have kept
me! Send for a taxi, will you?" she called to the passing
commissionaire. "Julian's promised not to leave poor Greta alone till I
get back."
Taxis were beginning to grow scarce in London. Napier had followed her
to the door; they could see the page-boy pursuing a cab. "Nan--"
She began to speak in a nervous, forestalling haste. "You've never
understood about Greta. _I_ believe it's people of strong natures that
suffer the most. Last night she couldn't sleep!"
"How do you know?"
"I watched the crack of light under her door. Twice I knocked and tried
to make her let me come in. She wouldn't. 'Go to sleep,' she said. As if
I could! Once she unbolted the door and came on tiptoe into my room.
What do you think for? To get a needle out of my case. Greta! sewing!
And what do you think she found to sew? She wouldn't tell me, but I saw
this morning. She had been trying to put herself to sleep by changing
the buttons on that very-buttony ulster of hers. Took off all the round,
bumpy ones and put on a flat kind instead. _I_ can't see it's any
improvement. But, then, I always hate buttons that don't button
anything, except when they're on cute little page-boys."
The cab had rushed up to the door with Buttons on the footboard. Another
of the button brotherhood stood by Napier's side.
"Will you please, sir, come up to seventy-two?"
* * * * *
He heard Julian's high voice through the closed door, and as it was
opened, "All that doesn't matter a straw," he was shouting impatiently
into the receiver. "Those regulations, you know as well as I do, can be
set aside for the special case. I _know_ she'll have to have a passport.
You've got to tell the fella at the American Embassy. What? Look here,
Tommy, you don't understand. I'll be round before you go to luncheon."
Napier had made his way among cardboard boxes and clothes-encumbered
chairs, to the sofa where Miss Greta half sat, half lay, in a becoming
mauve tea-gown. She gave him her hand.
"Hello!" said Julian, already looking up a new telephone number.
Madge came out of the adjoining bedroom, dragging an enormous
brown-paper parcel along the floor. "Did you know Nan had got you the
sealskin coat? How do, Mr. Gavan. It's a love of a coat. You'll wear it,
won't you?"
"No; pack it," said Miss Greta, indifferently.
"But on the boat, Miss Greta. You'll want some warm--"
"I've _got_ a coat," she said impatiently. "Take that thing back where
you found it."
"I say,"--Julian jumped up to lend a hand--"I didn't know you'd come
back, Madge. I might as well go now and see about the passport. What's
this?"
"Can't imagine. That's why I brought it in." Between Madge and her
unskilful assistant, the cord round the great bundle, already loose,
came off. The contents bulged. Julian picked the unwieldy thing up in
his arms, and a fold of heavy fur oozed out. And then the whole thing
had half slithered out of his hold and fell along the floor.
"Lawks!" remarked Madge, with wide eyes on the superb black-fox rug,
beaver-lined.
"Too heavy for anything but a Russian sledge," Julian objected.
"Well, _will_ you take it back in there, and put it in the canvas
hold-all!" Miss Greta settled back wearily against the ulster, as Madge
and Julian struggled into the next room with the rug between them. "I
understood Madge was going to bring the maid to do the packing," Miss
Greta murmured discontentedly.
Napier leaned forward.
"Do you approve this plan of Miss Ellis going to Germany?" he asked.
"I can easily believe you don't approve it," she said with a gleam of
_Schadenfreude_.
"I do more than disapprove," he answered under his breath. "I am going
to prevent it."
"Oh? And how do you propose to do that?"
"I had meant to put a spoke in the passport wheel. But there's a
better--a shorter way."
"Oh?"
He leaned nearer. "I have done my part to prevent Miss Ellis's
knowing"--Greta raised her china-blue eyes--"the things some of the rest
of us know."
"You are very considerate--of Miss Ellis."
"Exactly. I am too considerate of her to let her even apply for a
passport without my first of all--enlightening her before you leave."
"Ah,"--she drew in her breath--"you _would_, would you?"
Napier was aware of having to brace himself to meet the unexpected dart
of malignity out of the round eyes. But it passed--taking in the open
door of the bedroom as it dropped. And in its place came pure scorn,
controlled, intensely quiet, as she inquired in her society manner: "And
you think Nan would believe you? You suppose for one moment that your
word would stand any chance against mine?"
Napier concealed his harrowing doubt on this head. "I am to understand,
then, you are willing that the facts we have been at pains to suppress
should be known? Very well. I'll begin by enlightening Mr. Grant and
saving him the trouble of seeing about the passport." He caught the
sudden shift of focus in the china-blue eyes. "That's what I came up
for," Napier added.
There was silence for an instant, except for the talk floating in
through the open door: "No, let's fold it in three. I'll show you."
Was it the threat to enlighten Julian which had given her pause? "We
have Singleton downstairs,"--Napier quietly suggested witnesses for the
convincing of Mr. Grant--"and Grindley up."
"As if I didn't know!"
"Then you must know, too, that we are none of us making this experience
harder for you than is necessary. But"--their eyes met--"we are not
going to let you take that girl along."
"Couldn't live without her, eh?" she burst out. For the first time in
Napier's experience of her there was a common tang in her tone.
He rose to his feet. "Simply, she is not going with you. I thought you
might prefer to decide this yourself, or to tell her you have
ascertained that the passport difficulty is insuperable; anything you
like." She sat looking down on the film of handkerchief held affectedly
in the thick, white hand. There was no sign of anxiety or haste in
either her face or her weary attitude. "The alternative," Napier went on
in a quick undertone, "is that she will be staying behind with full
knowledge of all that we have up to now kept back."
She turned to him with smothered vehemence. "It never was my _plan_ to
take her. I don't know what on earth I'd do with her."
Napier repressed the jubilation crying out in his heart. "The question,
as I say, is merely, will you give her up after struggle and exposure or
will you do it quietly?"
She seemed to make a rapid calculation. "If I agree to this, will you
promise that she shall never know what I've gone through, this last
twenty-four hours?" The handkerchief went to her lips.
"No," said Napier, sternly, "but I'll promise that I won't enlighten her
before you leave."
"And Mr. Grant? If you tell _him_, you may as well tell every one. He
couldn't keep anything to save his neck."
"If _you_ keep to the course I've laid down, I don't know any special
reason for enlightening Mr. Grant." Napier knew that he was showing
weakness over the point. Yet, after all, in a few hours the woman would
be out of the country. Behind that wall of the German lines she would be
lost.
By the time Julian returned to the sitting-room, Miss Greta had accepted
the inevitable.
"I don't want to seem rude,"--she turned to Napier with her weary
grace--"but I think I must ask to be left alone awhile. Perhaps you'll
be so _very_ kind as to explain to Mr. Grant that in these circumstances
of family affliction"--only Napier recognized the Adelphi touch in the
phrase and in the lace-bordered handkerchief pressed to heroic
lips--"the more I think of it, the more I feel it would be best for me
to go home alone."
Napier went back to the hotel at five o'clock with Julian, who drove his
own big car to take the three to the station. The progress was slow and
penitential, for Miss Greta declined to lose sight of the two taxis
which followed with the luggage. Napier, with Madge at his side, sitting
opposite Nan and Miss Greta, found himself taking refuge from the
unconscious reproach in Nan's face by studying the buttons on Miss
Greta's ulster. There was a great many of those buttons. The immense
labor of changing them induced thoughtfulness. They were thicker, but
weren't the bigger ones exactly sovereign size? The smaller on collar,
cuffs, and pocket-flaps--weren't they precisely of half-sovereign
dimensions, excepting, again in thickness? He began to count....
"Look at that shop!" Nan leaned forward over the long narrow cardboard
box she was carrying.
The front glass was smashed, the place empty. Over the door was a sign,
"Zimmerman, Family Baker." A little way on stood yet another shop with
demolished front. On the opposite side was a third. There were seven in
all, over each a German name.
Nan looked away. Miss Greta seemed not to have heard the exclamation,
seemed to see nothing.
Some recruits for the army came lumping along, out of step, a sorry
enough crew, pasty-faced, undersized, in ill-fitting, shabby, civilian
clothes.
The china-blue eyes that had "gone blind" in front of raided German
shops were full of vision before this mockery of militarism. As she
looked out upon the human refuse for which war had found a use at last,
the subtle pity in Miss Greta's face asked as plain as words, "What
chance have these poor deluded 'volunteers' against the well-drilled
German, fed and fashioned for war?"
The station at last! As Napier helped Miss Greta out, the front of her
ulster swung heavily against his leg. "Sovereigns!" he said to himself.
The station was already densely crowded. While Napier and Madge mounted
guard over Behemoth and the lesser luggage, Julian and Nan, with Miss
Greta between them, disappeared in the crush.
When the reconnoitering party reappeared, Singleton was with them,
porters at his beck, in his hand Miss Greta's ticket, passport, and
German and Dutch money to the value of twenty pounds. He met the chief
inspector as if by appointment, near the luggage, that loomed so
important by contrast with that of other travelers.
To Miss Greta--although in her ugly ulster she looked less a person of
consequence than she might--was plainly accorded a special
consideration. Mr. Singleton was there to see to that. He could not, to
be sure, prevent some respectful interrogation as to the money, etc.,
she was taking out of the country, some perfunctory examination of
luggage.
The only anxious face in the group was Nan's. Miss Greta, calm as a May
morning, her round eyes trustingly raised to the inspector's face, with
eighty to ninety pounds in English gold on her coat, and how much more
elsewhere who should say, offering her purse and keys. "One is an
American lock. I may have to help you with that," she said sweetly.
Napier half-turned his back on them, but he stood so that he could keep
an eye on the stricken face above the long cardboard box which Nan was
carrying as if it were an infant. Through the din Greta's innocent
accents reached him. "Nobody ever told me! Oh, dear, my poor little
savings!" When Nan turned her tear-filled eyes away from the group about
Behemoth, Napier joined her.
"What shall you do after--after she is gone?" he asked.
"I haven't an idea beyond going back to the hotel to wait for my cable
from home." She made a diversion of opening the long cardboard box and
taking out six glorious roses tied with leaf-green and rose-colored
ribbon. But she held the flowers absently.
"I shall be at my chambers. If I can be of any--"
"Oh, thank you. I shan't need anything."
When Napier faced round again, Greta was smiling gently on the melted
inspector. Perhaps that functionary wouldn't have "forgotten" to
confiscate the few pieces of gold so frankly shown had he known they
were the mere residue left over from the lady's midnight activities.
They found themselves on the platform with, unhappily, time still to
spare. Singleton made polite conversation with Miss Greta, abetted by
Julian and Madge--who was taking the approaching parting with
astonishing composure. A lesson to poor Nan who couldn't keep the tears
out of her eyes. Her effort to smile very nearly cost both her and
Napier their self-possession. She went abruptly away from him, and stood
dumb behind Greta at Julian's side.
"Take your places!"
A whistle blew. Miss Greta was shaking hands with Singleton. "Thank you
_so_ much. You _have_ been kind." Her good-by to Julian and to Napier
were quieter, but entirely cordial. She embraced Madge with dramatic
fervor. "My darling child! We'll never forget--"
Nan stood, the tears running down her cheeks unchecked, and probably
unaware. A little apart she stood, all her sympathy, her very soul,
flowing out as a final offering. "Good-by, my Nanchen!" Miss Greta
kissed her on both cheeks. "You'll write me? And you won't forget me?"
Nan was far past power of words. She thrust the roses toward Greta with
a look that made Napier himself feel he could fall to crying. Even Miss
Greta seemed touched by some final compunction. The carriage-door had no
sooner slammed on her than she turned suddenly as if she had forgotten
something. "Nanchen!" she leaned out and took the girl's face in her two
hands. She bent and whispered. The guards shouted. The train began to
move.
"Oh, will you? _Will_ you, Greta?" Nan was running along the platform
with upturned face.
Miss Greta leaned far out, giving a flutter of white to the wind and
leaving a smile for memory.
Thank God! Napier breathed an inward prayer. She can't do any more harm
here.
Nan stood staring at the last coaches. Napier touched her arm. "Well?"
he said gently.
"I _oughtn't_ to be miserable," she wiped her wet cheeks. "To have Greta
soon to help me to bear things--ought to make it possible to bear them
now."
"You are still counting on her help?"
She nodded, "I'm to hold myself ready."
"Ready for what?"
"To join her. I shall pack my trunk to-night."
At the tail of the dispersing crowd, they were following Julian and
Madge down the platform. Napier slowed his pace, looking down at the
face beside him. Weeks, months, of passionate, fruitless waiting--no! "I
promised her," he said,--"the lady we've just seen the last of--that I
wouldn't enlighten you about her true character till she was gone. You
won't feel so badly at losing her when you hear what we know about Miss
von Schwarzen--"
"Oh, oh!" Nan stood quite still an instant. "I thought Greta did you an
injustice! You--you disappoint me horribly." She fled on to catch up the
others.
After all, what was the use of quarreling about a woman who was out of
the Saga? In a little while Nan would be able to bear the truth. Not
yet, it was too soon.
Julian was to take her back to the hotel; and that wasn't the worst.
Napier couldn't even go away by himself. He knew he ought to see Madge
to Lowndes Square, where the McIntyre motor and maid were to call at
seven o'clock for the purpose of conveying the young lady to Lamborough.
It was, at all events, something to be thankful for that Madge wasn't
howling. So far as Napier had observed, she hadn't shed a tear. This
wasn't the first occasion upon which Madge's late self-possession had
vaguely puzzled Napier.
The drive back to Lamborough was a silent one, except for that
extraordinary five minutes or so, after Madge had turned to say, "I wish
Nan had come back with us, don't you?"
"Yes," he said, "I wish she had."
"I begged her to. I said, 'What shall you do at that hotel?' and she
said she hardly knew yet. She'd see. Rotten arrangement, I call it."
Napier smiled down at the girl. It occurred to him she was looking
tired, too. And she hadn't cried a tear that Napier had seen. "You seem
to be getting on better with our American friend," he said, teasing.
"Stood it like a Spartan, even when you thought she was going to Germany
with Miss Greta."
"Well, I thought Miss Greta needed _some_body."
"But didn't you want the somebody to be _you_?"
"No."
He looked at her again. "I suppose you're expecting to have Miss Greta
back after the war."
"No," she said again, looking straight in front of her.
The thought of the solicitude of her parents to keep the dear child in
the dark, suddenly flashed over him, along with the conviction, Madge
knows!
Was it possible she accepted Greta's guilt? He couldn't make it out at
all. "Weren't you sorry to see her go?"
"It was horrid," she admitted. After a few seconds she found a steadier
voice in which to say, "It's been pretty horrid anyway, you know. We
could prevent people from saying things, but we couldn't prevent them
from looking things. They _wanted_ her to be a disgusting spy. They
hated her worse for not being."
"Why don't you want her back when the war is over?"
She drew her red eyebrows together in a frown. "I expect," she said
slowly, "it will be best for Germans to stay at home."
Napier laughed, but he felt sorry, in a way, to see Wildfire growing so
sage. Evidently she had gone through a great deal in these weeks, a
great deal of which she had given no sign. Behind her homesickness for
her idol, Napier detected a great relief at the idol's being out of the
way of suspicion and misprizing.
"That was why I wanted so to go and see her off. To try to make up a
little; to do everything we _could_ do just because I felt there'd never
be any other chance." The tears came at last. "She _was_ nice, wasn't
she, Mr. Gavan?"
"She was wonderful." And before they fell back into that silence that
lasted till they reached Lamborough, he asked, "How long have you known,
Meggy?"
"Been sure only since yesterday--those men, what they did to her room."
There was good stuff in the McIntyre child, he said to himself. The part
she'd played wouldn't have shamed Napier or even a Nicholson Grant.
There was nobody about to receive them on their return. When Madge had
gone up to her mother, Napier took his way down the hall to Sir
William's room. But he caught sight of him through the open door of the
drawing-room at the far end. Sir William sat reading. That was natural
enough, and he was sitting in his own chair. But as far away as Napier
could see his chief, he was vaguely aware of something odd about the
figure that was, or should be, so intimately familiar. It wasn't merely
that Sir William did not instantly rise to his feet, seal-jingling, and
call out, "Evening paper? Anything new about--" The first impression was
of a man smaller than Napier had realized Sir William to be. Or had
he--Napier half smiled at the grotesque idea--had he shrunken in these
last hours? The great chair Miss Greta had fetched for him from
Kirklamont certainly did seem ludicrously too big for a being so
diminished, not only in body, but in spirit. His quick turns and vivid
ways--what, Napier wondered with a dreamlike feeling as he walked down
the room, had happened to all the familiar, foolish, endearing oddities?
For an instant the thought thrust shrewdly, Is he dead? No, he moved.
"Well, sir, we have done your commission."
Like the action of a wooden automaton, one short-fingered hand was
pushed out toward the reading-desk. It seemed to point to the small
phial that lay on the ledge of the rack; the phial he had carried in his
pocket for months now as precaution in the event of an attack of
angina. But Sir William's eyes were not on the phial. They were fixed on
an open telegram.
And it was that telegram Sir William had sat reading. For how long?
The telegram regretted to inform him that his son, Captain Colin
McIntyre, while bravely leading his battalion, had been killed in
action.