There was a suspicion of tears in her voice as she turned away and left me without another word. She was quite out of sight around the bend in the staircase, and her little boots were clattering swiftly upwards, before I fully grasped the significance of her explanation--or, I might better say, her reproach. It slowly dawned upon me that I had said a great many things to her that it would pay me to remember before questioning her motives in any particular.
As the day for her departure drew nearer,--it was now but forty-eight hours away,--her manner seemed to undergo a complete change. She became moody, nervous, depressed. Of course, all this was attributable to the dread of discovery and capture when she was once outside the great walls of Schloss Rothhoefen. I could understand her feelings, and rather lamely attempted to bolster up her courage by making light of the supposed perils.
She looked at me with a certain pathetic sombreness in her eyes that caused my heart to ache. All of her joyous raillery was gone, all of her gentle arrogance. Her sole interest in life in these last days seemed to be of a sacrificial nature. She was sweet and gentle with every one,--with me in particular, I may say,--and there was something positively humble in her att.i.tude of self-abnegation. Where she had once been wilful and ironic, she was now gentle and considerate. Nor was I the only one to note these subtle changes in her. I doubt, however, if the others were less puzzled than I. In fact, Mrs. t.i.tus was palpably perplexed, and there were times when I caught her eyeing me with distinct disapproval, as if she were seeking in me the cause of her daughter"s weaknesses; as much as to say: "What other nonsense have you been putting into the poor child"s head, you wretch?"
I went up to have a parting romp with Rosemary on the last night of her stay with me, to have my last sip of honey from her delectable neck. The Countess paid but little attention to us. She sat over in the window and stared out into the dusky shadows of the falling night.
My heart was sore. I was miserable. The last romp!
Blake finally s.n.a.t.c.hed Rosemary off to bed. It was then that the Countess aroused herself and came over to me with a sad little smile on her lips.
"Good night," she said, rather wistfully, holding out her hand to me.
I deliberately glanced at my watch. "It"s only ten minutes past eight,"
I said, reproachfully.
"I know," she said, quietly. "Good night."
CHAPTER XVIII
I SPEED THE PARTING GUEST
Four o"clock in the morning is a graceless hour. Graveyards may yawn at twelve but even they are content to slumber at four. I don"t believe there is anything so desolate in this world as the mental perspective one obtains at four o"clock. Tombstones are bright beacons of cheer as compared to the monumental regret one experiences on getting up to greet the alleged and vastly over-rated glories of a budding day. The sunrise is a pall! It is a deadly, dour thing. It may be pink and red and golden and full of all the splendours of the east, but it is a resurrection and you can"t make anything else out of it. Staying up till four and then going to bed gives one an idea of the sunrise that is not supported by the facts; there is but one way to appreciate the real nature of the hateful thing called dawn, and that is to get up with it instead of taking it to bed with you.
Still, I suppose the sun _has_ to come up and perhaps it is just as well that it does so at an hour when people are least likely to suspect it of anything so shabby.
Four o"clock is more than a graceless, sodden hour when it ushers in a day that you know is to be the unhappiest in your life; when you know that you are to say farewell forever to the hopes begot and nurtured in other days; when the one you love smiles and goes away to smile again but not for you. And that is just what four o"clock on the morning of the fourteenth of September meant to me.
Britton and I set forth in the automobile just at the break of dawn, crossing the river a few miles below the castle, and running back to a point on the right hand bank where we were to await the arrival of the boat conveying the Countess and her escort. Her luggage, carefully disguised as crated merchandise, had gone to Trieste by fast express a couple of days before, sent in my name and consigned to a gentleman whose name I do not now recall, but who in reality served as a sort of middleman in transferring the shipment to the custody of a certain yacht"s commander.
It was required of me--and of my machine, which is more to the point--that the distance of one hundred and twenty miles through the foothills of the Austrian Alps should be covered and the pa.s.sengers delivered at a certain railway station fifty miles or more south of Vienna before ten o"clock that night. There they were to catch a train for the little seaport on the upper Adriatic, the name of which I was sworn never to reveal, and, as I have not considered it worth while to be released from that oath, I am of necessity compelled to omit the mention of it here.
Mr. Bangs went on to Vienna the night before our departure, taking with him Helene Marie Louise Antoinette, a rather shocking arrangement you would say unless you had come to know the British lawyer as well as we knew him. They were to proceed by the early morning train to this obscure seaport. Colingraft t.i.tus elected to accompany his sister the entire length of the journey, with the faithful Blake and Rosemary.
Billy Smith was to meet us a few miles outside the town for which we were bound, with a word of warning if there was anything sinister in the wind.
I heard afterwards from p.o.o.pend.y.k.e that the departure of the Countess and Rosemary from the castle in the grey; forlorn dawn of that historic fourteenth was attended by a demonstration of grief on the part of the four Schmicks that was far beyond his powers of description, and he possesses a wonderful ability to describe lachrymose situations, rather running to that style of incident, I may say. The elder Schmicks wailed and boo-hooed and proclaimed to the topmost turrets that the sun would never shine again for either of them, and, to prove that she was quite in earnest about the matter, Gretel fell off the dock into the river and was nearly drowned before Jasper, Jr., could dive in and get her.
Their sons, both of whom cherished amorous feelings for Blake, sighed so prodigiously all the way down the river that the boat rocked.
Incidentally, during the excitement, Jinko, who was to remain behind and journey westward later on with Mrs. t.i.tus and Jasper, Jr., succeeded after weeks of vain endeavour in smartly nipping the calf of Hawkes"
left leg, a feat of which he no doubt was proud but which sentenced my impressive butler to an everlasting dread of hydrophobia and a temporary limp.
It was nearing five o"clock when the boat slipped into view around the tree-covered point of land and headed straight for our hiding place on the bank.
I shall not stop here to describe the first stage of our journey through the narrow, rocky by-roads that ended eventually in the broad, alpine highway south and west of Vienna. Let it be sufficient to say that we jostled along for twelve or fifteen miles without special incident, although we were nervously anxious and apprehensive. Our guide book pointed, or rather twiddled, a route from the river flats into the hills, where we came up with the main road about eight o"clock. We were wrapped and goggled to the verge of ludicrousness. It would have been quite impossible to penetrate our motor-masks and armour, even for one possessed of a keen and practiced eye. The Countess was heavily veiled; great goggles bulged beneath the green, gauzy thing that protected her lovely face from sun, wind and man. A motor coat, two or three sizes too large, enveloped her slender, graceful figure, and gauntlets covered her hands. Even Rosemary"s tiny face was wrapped in a silken veil of white. As for the rest of us, we could not have been mistaken for anything on earth but American automobilists, ruthlessly inspired to see Europe with the sole view to comparing her roads with our own at home. You would have said, on seeing us, that we knew a great deal about roads and very little about home.
Colingraft and Britton,--the latter at the wheel,--sat in the front seat, while I shared the broad cushions of the tonneau with the Countess, part of the time holding Rosemary, who was clamouring for food, and the rest of the time holding my breath in the fear that we might slip over a precipice. I am always nervous when not driving the car myself.
We stopped for breakfast at a small mountain inn, fifteen miles from our starting place. The Countess, a faint red spot in each cheek and a curiously bright, feverish glow in her dark eyes, revealed a tendency to monopolise the conversation, a condition properly attributed to nervous excitement. I could see that she was vastly thrilled by the experiences of the hour; her quick, alert brain was keeping pace with the rush of blood that stimulated every fibre in her body to new activities. She talked almost incessantly, and chiefly about matters entirely foreign to the enterprise in hand.
The more I see of women, the less I know about them. Why she should have spent the whole half hour devoted to breakfast to a surprisingly innocuous dissertation on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is--or was--beyond me.
How was I to know that tears lay close to the surface of those shimmering, vivacious eyes? How was I to know that sobs took refuge behind a simulated interest in philosophy?
We had luncheon picnic fashion half-way to our journey"s end, diverging from the main road to find a secluded spot where we could spread our cloth and open our hampers without fear of interruption or, to use a more sinister word, detection. It was rather a jolly affair, that first and last al fres...o...b..nquet of ours under the spreading branches of mighty trees and beside the trickling waters of a gay little mountain brook that hurried like mad down to the broad channel of the Danube, now many miles away. The strain of the first few hours had slackened.
Success seemed a.s.sured. We had encountered no difficulties, no dangers in town or country. No one appeared to be interested in us except through idle curiosity; villagers and peasants stared at us and grinned; policemen and soldiers stood aside to let us pa.s.s, or gave directions politely when requested to do so. There were no signs of pursuit, no indications of trouble ahead. And so we could afford to be gay and confident at our midday meal in the hills bordering the broad highway.
We even went so far as to arrange for a jolly reunion in New York City at no distant day! I remember distinctly that we were to dine at Sherry"s. To me, the day seemed a long way off.
I suppose, being a writer of fiction, I should be able to supply at this point in the narrative, a series of thrilling, perhaps hair-raising encounters with the enemy, in the form of spies, cut-throats, imperial mercenaries or whatever came handiest to the imagination. It would be a very simple matter to transform this veracious history into the most lurid of melodramas by the introduction of the false and bizarre, but it is not my purpose to do so. I mean to adhere strictly to the truth and stand by the consequences. Were I inclined to sensationalism it would be no trouble at all for me to have Tarnowsy"s agents shooting at our tires or gasoline tank from every crag and cranny; or to have Rosemary kidnapped by aeroplanists supplied with drag-hooks; or to have the Countess lodged in a village prison from which I should be obliged to liberate her with battle-axe and six-shooter, my compensation being a joyous rest in a hospital with the fair Aline nursing me back to health and strength and cooing fond words in my rapacious ear the while I reflected on the n.o.ble endowments of a nature that heretofore had been commonplace and meek. But, no! None of these things happened and I decline to perjure myself for the privilege of getting into the list of "six best sellers."
So far as I am able to judge, there was absolutely no heroism displayed during our flight through the hills and valleys, unless you are willing to accept as such a single dash of sixty miles an hour which Britton made in order to avoid a rain-shower that threatened to flank us if we observed the speed laws.
But wait! There was an example of bravado on my part that shall not go unrecorded. I hesitated at first to put it down in writing, but my sense of honour urges me to confess everything. It happened just after that memorable picnic luncheon in the shady dell. The Countess, I maintain, was somewhat to blame for the incident. She suggested that we,--that is to say, the two of us,--explore the upper recesses of this picturesque spot while the others were making ready for the resumption of our journey.
Shame, contrition, humiliation or whatever you may elect to call it, forbids a lengthy or even apologetic explanation of what followed her unfortunate suggestion. I shall get over with it in as few words as possible.
In the most obscure spot in all those ancient hills, I succ.u.mbed to an execrable impulse to take her forcibly in my arms and kiss her! I don"t know why I did it, or how, but that is just what happened. My shame, my horror over the transcendental folly was made almost unbearable by the way in which she took it. At first I thought she had swooned, she lay so limp and unresisting in my arms. My only excuse, whispered penitently in her ear, was that I couldn"t help doing what I had done, and that I deserved to be drawn and quartered for taking advantage of my superior strength and her gentle forbearance. Strange to say, she merely looked at me in a sort of dumb wonder and quietly released herself, still staring at me as if I were the most inexplicable puzzle in the world. Her cheeks, her throat, her brow grew warm and pink with a just indignation; her lips parted but she uttered no word.
Then I followed her dejectedly, cravenly back to the roadside and executed an inward curse that would hang over my miserable head so long as it was on my shoulders.
Her vivacity was gone. She shrank down into the corner of the seat, and, with her back half turned toward me, gazed steadfastly at the panoramic valley which we were skirting. From time to time I glanced, at her out of the corners of my eyes, and eventually was somewhat relieved to see that she had closed her own and was dozing. My soul was in despair. She loathed, despised me. I could not blame her. I despised myself.
And yet my heart quickened every time I allowed myself to think of the crime I had committed.
The day was a glorious one and the road more than pa.s.sably good. We bowled along at a steady rate of speed and sundown found us about twenty-five miles from our destination. Not caring to run the risk of a prolonged stay in the town, we drew up at a roadside inn and had our dinner in the quaint little garden, afterwards proceeding leisurely by moonlight down the sloping highway.
Billy Smith met us six or eight miles out and we stopped to parley.
He examined the Countess"s skilfully prepared pa.s.sports, p.r.o.nounced them genuine (!), and then gave us the cheerful news that "everything was lovely and the goose hung high." The train for the coast was due to leave the Staats-bahn-hof at 10.05, and we had an hour to spare.
He proposed that we spend it quite comfortably at the roadside while Britton went through the pretence of repairing our tires. This seemed an agreeable arrangement for every one but Britton, who looked so glum that I, glad of the excuse, offered to help him.
No sooner was I out of the car and Billy Smith in my place beside the Countess than she became quite gay and vivacious once more. She laughed and chatted with him in a manner that promptly convinced me that propinquity so far as I was concerned had had a most depressing effect upon her, and that she revelled in the change of companions.
I was so disturbed by the discovery that Britton had to caution me several times to handle the inner tubes less roughly or I _would_ damage them and we might suffer a blow-out after all.
Every one appeared to be gay and frivolous, even Blake, who chattered _sotto voce_ with Britton, that excellent rascal spending most of his time leaning against the spare tires in order to catch what she was saying for his benefit. All efforts to draw me into the general conversation were unavailing. I was as morose and unresponsive as an Egyptian mummy, and for a very excellent reason, I submit. The Countess deliberately refused to address a single remark to me. Indeed, when I seemed perilously near to being drawn into the conversation she relapsed into a silence that was most forbidding. My cup of misery was overflowing.
I wondered if she would feel called upon, at some distant confessional, to tell the fortunate Lord Amberdale that I had brutally kissed her.
And Lord Amberdale would grin in his beastly supercilious English way and say: "What else could you have expected from a bally American bounder?" She would no doubt smile indulgently.
Heigh-ho!
All things come to an end, however. We found ourselves at last uttering our good-byes in the railway station, surrounded by hurrying travellers and attended by eager porters.
The Countess did not lift her veil. I deliberately drew her aside. My hot hand clasped hers, and found it as cold as ice and trembling.
"For G.o.d"s sake," I whispered hoa.r.s.ely in my humbleness, "say that you forgive me?"
She did not speak for many seconds. Then her voice was very low and tremulous. I felt that her sombre eyes were accusing me even as they tried to meet my own with a steadiness that was meant to be rea.s.suring.