Then that quick smile of hers, a little grave but very charming, broke over her face.
"But let us get away for a little from war," she said. "You aren"t smoking. Please do, if you wish to."
I lit a cigarette, and offered one to her, but she said she did not smoke. And I liked her all the better. We talked more lightly for a while, or perhaps I should rather say less earnestly, for our situation did not lend itself to frivolity. It did lend itself however to romance,--we two sitting on either side of the peat fire, with a shaded lamp and the friendly flames throwing odd lights and shadows through the low, primitive room with its sloping attic-like walls and its scanty furniture; and the wind all the while tempestuously booming in the chimney and scouring land and sea. And neither on land nor sea was there a single friend; surrounded by enemies who would have given a heavy price to have learned who sat in that room, we talked of many things.
At last, all too soon, she rose and wished me good-night. A demon of perversity seized me.
"I shall escort you down to Mr Tiel, and the devil take his precautions!" I exclaimed.
"Oh no," she protested. "After all he is in command."
She really seemed quite concerned at my intention, but I can be very obstinate when I choose.
"Tuts!" I said. "It is sheer rubbish to pretend that there is any risk at this time of night. Probably he is still out, and anyhow he will not have visitors at this hour."
She looked at me very hard and quickly as if to see if I were possible to argue with, and then she gave a little laugh and merely said--
"You are terribly wilful, Mr Belke!"
And she ran downstairs very quickly, as though to run away from me. I followed fast, but she was some paces ahead of me as we went down the dark pa.s.sage to the front of the house. And then suddenly I heard guarded voices, and stopped dead.
There was a bend in the pa.s.sage just before it reached the hall, and Eileen had pa.s.sed this while I had not, and so I could see nothing ahead. Then I heard the voice of Tiel say--
"Well?"
It was a simple word of little significance, but the voice in which it was said filled me with a very unpleasant sensation. The man spoke in such a familiar, confidential way that I suddenly felt I could have shot him cheerfully. For the instant I forgot the problem of the other voice I had heard.
"Mr Belke is with me! He insisted," she cried.
At this I knew that the unknown voice could not belong to an enemy, and I advanced again. As I pa.s.sed the bend in the pa.s.sage I was just in time to see Tiel closing the front door behind a man in a long dark coat with a gleam of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and to hear him say,
"Good-night, Ashington."
Eileen pa.s.sed into the parlour with a smiling glance for me to follow, and Tiel came in after us. I was not in the most pleasant temper. In fact, for some reason I was in a very black humour.
"I thought you had gone out," I said to him at once.
"I did go out."
"But now I understand that the worthy Captain Ashington has been visiting you here!"
"Both these remarkable events have occurred," said Tiel drily.
When I recalled how long Eileen had been up in my room, I realised that this was quite possible, but this did not, for some reason, soothe me.
"Why did he come?" I asked.
"The fleet is going out on Friday."
"Aha!" I exclaimed, forgetting my annoyance for the moment.
"So that is settled at last," said Tiel with a satisfied smile.
He happened to turn his smile on Eileen also, and my annoyance returned.
"You dismissed our dear friend Ashington very quickly when you heard me coming," I remarked in no very amiable tone.
Tiel looked at me gravely.
"Belke," he said, "you might quite well have done serious mischief by showing your dislike for Ashington so palpably the other day. Even a man of that sort has feelings. I have soothed them, I am glad to say, but he was not very anxious to meet you again."
"So much the better!" said I. "Traitors are not the usual company a German officer keeps."
"Many of us have to mix with strange company nowadays, Mr Belke," said Eileen.
Her sparkling eye and her grave smile disarmed me instantly. I felt suddenly conscious I was not playing a very judicious part, or showing myself perhaps to great advantage. So I bade them both good-night and returned to my room.
But it was not to go to bed. For two mortal hours I paced my floor, and thought and thought, but not about any problem of the war. I kept hearing Tiel"s "Well," spoken in that hatefully intimate way, and then remembering that those two were alone--all night!--in the front part of the house, far out of sound or reach of me. I did not doubt Eileen for an instant, but that calm, cool, cosmopolitan adventurer, who could knock an unsuspecting clergyman on the head and throw him over a cliff, and then tell the story with a smile,--what was he not capable of?
Again and again I asked myself why it concerned me. This was a girl I had only known for hours. But her smile was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep at length about three o"clock in the morning.
VIII.
THE DECISION.
In the morning I came down to breakfast without asking anybody"s leave, and I looked at those two very hard. To see Eileen fresh and calm and smiling gave me the most intense relief, while, as for Tiel, he looked as cool and imperturbable as he always did--and I cannot put it stronger than that, for nothing more cool and imperturbable than Tiel ever breathed. In fact it could not have breathed, for it would have had to be a graven image.
He looked at me critically, but all he said was--
"If it wasn"t too wet for your nice uniform, Belke, we might have had breakfast on the lawn."
"You are afraid some one may come and look in at this window?" I asked.
"On the whole there is rather more risk of that than of some one climbing up to look in at your bedroom window," said he.
"You think a great deal of risks," I observed.
"Yes," said he. "I am a nervous man."
Eileen laughed merrily, and I could not but confess that for once he had scored. I resolved not to give him the chance again. He then proceeded to draw the table towards one end of the room, pulled the nearest curtain part way across, and then locked the front door. But I made no comments this time.
At breakfast Eileen acted as hostess, and so charming and natural was she that the little cloud seemed to blow over, and we all three discussed our coming plan of attack on the fleet fully and quite freely. Tiel made several suggestions, which he said he had been discussing with Ashington, and, as they seemed extremely sound, I made notes of them and promised to lay them before Wiedermann.
When we had finished and had a smoke, Tiel rose and said he must go out "on parish business." I asked him what he meant, and learned to my amus.e.m.e.nt that in his capacity of the Rev. Alexander Burnett he had to attend a meeting of what he called the "kirk-session." We both laughed, and wished him good luck, and then before he left he said--