“It is you, Baroness! I rang up to see whether there was any chance of your being able to dine with me? I have just got back to town.”
“How dared you go away without telling me!” she exclaimed. “And how can I dine with you? Do you not realise that it is Ascot Thursday, and I have had many invitations to dine to-night? I am going to a very big dinner-party at Thurm House.”
“Bad luck!” Norgate replied disconsolately. “And to-morrow?”
“I have not finished about to-night yet,” Anna continued. “I suppose you do not, by any chance, want me to dine with you very much?”
“Of course I do,” was the prompt answer. “You see plenty of the Princess of Thurm and nothing of me, and there is always the chance that you may have to go abroad. I think that it is your duty—”
“As a matter of duty,” Anna interrupted, “I ought to dine at Thurm House. As a matter of pleasure, I shall dine with you. You will very likely not enjoy yourself. I am going to be very cross indeed. You have neglected me shamefully. It is only these wonderful roses which have saved you.”
“So long as I am saved,” he murmured, “tell me, please, where you would like to dine?”
“Any place on earth,” she replied. “You may call for me here at half-past eight. I shall wear a hat and I would like to go somewhere where our people do not go.”
Anna set down the telephone. The listlessness had gone from her manner. She glanced at the clock and ran lightly into the other room.
“Put all that splendour away,” she ordered her maid cheerfully. “To-night we shall dazzle no one. Something perfectly quiet and a hat, please. I dine in a restaurant. And ring the bell, Marie, for two aperitifs—not that I need one. I am hungry, Marie. I am looking forward to my dinner already. I think something dead black. I am looking well tonight. I can afford to wear black.”
Marie beamed.
“Madame has recovered her spirits,” she remarked demurely.
Anna was suddenly silent. Her light-heartedness was a revelation. She turned to her maid.
“Marie,” she directed, “you will telephone to Thurm House. You will ask for Lucille, the Princess’s maid. You will give my love to the Princess. You will say that a sudden headache has prostrated me. It will be enough. You need say no more. To-morrow I lunch with the Princess, and she will understand.”
CHAPTER XXV
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“Confess,” Anna exclaimed, as she leaned back in her chair, “that my idea was excellent! Your little restaurant was in its way perfection, but the heat—does one feel it anywhere, I wonder, as one does in London?”
“Here, at any rate, we have air,” Norgate remarked appreciatively.
“We are far removed,” she went on, “from the clamour of diners, that babel of voices, the smell of cooking, the meretricious music. We look over the house-tops. Soon, just behind that tall building there, you will see the yellow moon.”
They were taking their coffee in Anna’s sitting-room, seated in easy-chairs drawn up to the wide-flung windows. The topmost boughs of some tall elm trees rustled almost in their faces. Away before them spread the phantasmagoria of a wilderness of London roofs, softened and melting into the dim blue obscurity of the falling twilight. Lights were flashing out everywhere, and above them shone the stars. Norgate drew a long breath of content.
“It is wonderful, this,” he murmured.
“We are at least alone,” Anna said, “and I can talk to you. I want to talk to you. Should you be very much flattered, I wonder, if I were to say that I have been thinking of little else for the last three or four days than how to approach you, how to say something to you without any fear of being misunderstood, how to convince you of my own sincerity?”
“If I am not flattered,” he answered, looking at her keenly, “I am at least content. Please go on.”
“You are one of those, I believe,” she continued earnestly, “who realise that somewhere not far removed from the splendour of these summer days, a storm is gathering. I am one of those who know. England has but a few more weeks of this self-confident, self-esteeming security. Very soon the shock will come. Oh! you sit there, my friend, and you are very monosyllabic, but that is because you do not wholly trust me.”
He swung suddenly round upon her and there was an unaccustomed fire in his eyes.
“May it not be for some other reason?” he asked quickly.
There was a moment’s silence. Her own face seemed paler than ever in the strange half light, but her eyes were wonderful. He told himself with passionate insistence that they were the eyes of a truthful woman.
“Tell me,” she begged, “what reason?”
He leaned towards her.
“It is so hopeless,” he said. “I am just a broken diplomat whose career is ended almost before it is begun, and you—well, you have everything at your feet. It is foolish of me, isn’t it, but I love you.”
He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it.
“If it is foolish,” she murmured, “then I am foolish, too. Perhaps you can guess now why I came to London.”
He drew her into his arms. She made no resistance. Her lips, even, were seeking his. It seemed to him in those breathless moments that a greater thing than even the destiny of nations was born into the world. There was a new vigour in his pulses as she gently pushed him back, a new splendour in life.
“Dear,” she exclaimed, “of course we are both very foolish, and yet, I do not know. I have been wondering why this has not come to me long ago, and now that it has come I am happy.”
“You care—you really care?” he insisted passionately.
“Of course I do,” she told him, quietly enough and yet very convincingly. “If I did not care I should not be here. If I did not care, I should not be going to say the things to you which I am going to say now. Sit back in your chair, please, hold my hand still, smoke if you will, but listen.”
He obeyed. A deeper seriousness crept into her tone, but her face was still soft and wonderful. The new things were lingering there.
“I want to tell you first,” she said, “what I think you already know. The moment for which Germany has toiled so long, from which she has never faltered, is very close at hand. With all her marvellous resources and that amazing war equipment of which you in this country know little, she will soon throw down the gage to England. You are an Englishman, Francis. You are not going to forget it, are you?”
“Forget it?” he repeated.
“I know,” she continued slowly, “that Selingman has made advances to you. I know that he has a devilish gift for enrolling on his list men of honour and conscience. He has the knack of subtle argument, of twisting facts and preying upon human weaknesses. You have been shockingly treated by your Foreign Office. You yourself are entirely out of sympathy with your Government. You know very well that England, as she is, is a country which has lost her ideals, a country in which many of her sons might indeed, without much reproach, lose their pride, Selingman knows this. He knows how to work upon these facts. He might very easily convince you that the truest service you could render your country was to assist her in passing through a temporary tribulation.”
He looked at her almost in surprise.
“You seem to know the man’s methods,” he observed.
“I do,” she answered, “and I detest them. Now, Francis, please tell me the truth. Is your name, too, upon that long roll of those who are pledged to assist his country?”
“It is,” he admitted.
She drew a little away.
“You admit it? You have already consented?”
“I have drawn a quarter’s salary,” Norgate confessed. “I have entered Selingman’s corps of the German Secret Service.”
“You mean that you are a traitor!” she exclaimed.
“A traitor to the false England of to-day,” Norgate replied, “a friend, I hope, of the real England.”
She sat quite still for some moments.
“
Somehow or other,” she said, “I scarcely fancied that you would give in so easily.”
“You seem disappointed,” he remarked, “yet, after all, am I not on your side?”
“I suppose so,” she answered, without enthusiasm.
There was another and a more prolonged silence. Norgate rose at last to his feet. He walked restlessly to the end of the room and back again. A dark mass of clouds had rolled up; the air seemed almost sulphurous with the presage of a coming storm. They looked out into the gathering darkness.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You are Austrian; that is the same as German. I tell you that I have come over on your side. You seem disappointed.”
“Perhaps I am,” she admitted, standing up, too, and linking her arm through his. “You see, my mother was English, and they say that I am entirely like her. I was brought up here in the English country. Sometimes my life at Vienna and Berlin seems almost like a dream to me, something unreal, as though I were playing at being some other woman. When I am back here, I feel as though I had come home. Do you know really that nothing would make me happier than to hear or think nothing about duty, to just know that I had come back to England to stay, and that you were English, and that we were going to live just the sort of life I pictured to myself that two people could live so happily over here, without too much ambition, without intrigue, simply and honestly. I am a little weary of cities and courts, Francis. To-night more than ever England seems to appeal to me, to remind me that I am one of her daughters.”
“Are you trying me, Anna?” he asked hoarsely.
“Trying you? Of course not!” she answered. “I am speaking to you just simply and naturally, because you are the one person in the world to whom I may speak like that.”
“Then let’s drop it, both of us!” he exclaimed, holding her arm tightly to his. “Courts and cities can do without you, and Selingman can do without me. We’ll take a cottage somewhere and live through these evil days.”
She shook her head.
“You and I are not like that, Francis,” she declared. “When the storm breaks, we mustn’t be found hiding in our holes. You know that quite well. It is for us to decide what part we may play. You have chosen. So, in a measure, have I. Tomorrow I am going on a secret mission to Italy.”
“Anna!” he cried in dismay.
“Alas, yes!” she repeated, “We may not even meet again, Francis, till the map of Europe has been rewritten with the blood of many of our friends and millions of our country-people. But I shall think of you, and the kiss you will give me now shall be the last upon my lips.”
“You can go away?” he demanded. “You can leave me like this?”
“I must,” she answered simply. “I have work before me. Good-by, Francis! Somehow I knew what was coming. I believe that I am glad, dear, but I must think about it, and so must you.”
Norgate left the hotel and walked out amid the first mutterings of the storm. He found a taxi and drove to his rooms. For an hour he sat before his window, watching the lightning play, fighting the thoughts which beat upon his brain, fighting all the time a losing battle. At midnight the storm had ceased. He walked back through the rain-streaming streets. The air was filled with sweet and pungent perfumes. The heaviness had passed from the atmosphere. His own heart was lighter; he walked swiftly. Outside her hotel he paused and looked up at the window. There was a light still burning in her room. He even fancied that he could see the outline of her figure leaning back in the easy-chair which he had wheeled up close to the casement. He entered the hotel, stepped into the lift, ascended to her floor, and made his way with tingling pulses and beating heart along the corridor. He knocked softly at her door. There was a little hesitation, then he heard her voice on the other side.
“Who is that?”
“It is I—Francis,” he answered softly. “Let me in.”
There was a little exclamation. She opened the door, holding up her finger.
“Quietly,” she whispered. “What is it, Francis? Why have you come back? What has happened to you?”
He drew her into the room. She herself looked weary, and there were lines under her eyes. It seemed, even, as though she might have been weeping. But it was a new Norgate who spoke. His words rang out with a fierce vigour, his eyes seemed on fire.
“Anna,” he cried, “I can’t fence with you. I can’t lie to you. I can’t deceive you. I’ve tried these things, and I went away choking, I had to come back. You shall know the truth, even though you betray me. I am no man of Selingman’s. I have taken his paltry money—it went last night to a hospital. I am for England—God knows it!—the England of any government, England, however misguided or mistaken. I want to do the work for her that’s easiest and that comes to me. I am on Selingman’s roll. What do you think he’ll get from me? Nothing that isn’t false, no information that won’t mislead him, no facts save those I shall distort until they may seem so near the truth that he will build and count upon them. Every minute of my time will be spent to foil his schemes. They don’t believe me in Whitehall, or Selingman would be at Bow Street to-morrow morning. That’s why I am going my own way. Tell him, if you will. There is only one thing strong enough to bring me here, to risk everything, and that’s my love for you.”
She was in his arms, sobbing and crying, and yet laughing. She clutched at him, drew down his face and covered his lips with kisses.
“Oh! I am so thankful,” she cried, “so thankful! Francis, I ached—my heart ached to have you sit there and talk as you did. Now I know that you are the man I thought you were. Francis, we will work together.”
“You mean it?”
“I do, England was my mother’s country, England shall be my husband’s country. I will tell you many things that should help. From now my work shall be for you. If they find me out, well, I will pay the price. You shall run your risk, Francis, for your country, and I must take mine; but at least we’ll keep our honour and our conscience and our love. Oh, this is a better parting, dear! This is a better good night!”
CHAPTER XXVI
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Mrs. Benedek was the first to notice the transformation which had certainly taken place in Norgate’s appearance. She came and sat by his side upon the cushioned fender.
“What a metamorphosis!” she exclaimed. “Why, you look as though Providence had been showering countless benefits upon you.”
There were several people lounging around, and Mrs. Benedek’s remark certainly had point.
“You look like Monty, when he’s had a winning week,” one of them observed.
“It is something more than gross lucre,” a young man declared, who had just strolled up. “I believe that it is a good fat appointment. Rome, perhaps, where every one of you fellows wants to get to, nowadays.”
“Or perhaps,” the Prince intervened, with a little bow, “Mrs. Benedek has promised to dine with you? She is generally responsible for the gloom or happiness of us poor males in this room.”
Norgate smiled.
“None of these wonderful things have happened—and yet, something perhaps more wonderful,” he announced. “I am engaged to be married.”
There was a mingled chorus of exclamations and congratulations. Selingman, who had been standing on the outskirts of the group, drew a little nearer. His face wore a somewhat puzzled expression.
“And the lady?” he enquired. “May we not know the lady’s name? That is surely important?”
“It is the Baroness von Haase,” Norgate replied. “You probably know her by name and repute, at least, Mr. Selingman. She is an Austrian, but she is often at Berlin.”
Selingman stretched out his great hand. For some reason or other, the announcement seemed to have given him real pleasure.
“Know her? My dear young friend, while I may not claim the privilege of intimate friendship with her, the Baroness is a young lady of the greatest distinction and repute in Berlin. I congratulate you. I congratulate you most heartily. The anger of o
ur young princeling is no longer to be wondered at. I cannot tell you how thoroughly interesting this news is to me.”
“You are very good indeed, I am sure, all of you,” Norgate declared, answering the general murmur of kindly words. “The Baroness doesn’t play bridge, but I’d like to bring her in one afternoon, if I may.”
“I have had the honour of meeting the Baroness von Haase several times,” Prince Lenemaur said. “It will give me the utmost pleasure to renew my acquaintance with her. These alliances are most pleasing. Since I have taken up my residence in this country, I regard them with the utmost favour. They do much to cement the good feeling between Germany, Austria, and England, which is so desirable.”
“English people,” Mrs. Benedek remarked, “will at least have the opportunity of judging Austrian women from the proper standpoint. Anna is one of the most accomplished and beautiful women in either Vienna or Berlin. I hope so much that she will not have forgotten me altogether.”
They all drifted presently back to the bridge tables. Norgate, however, excused himself. He had some letters to write, he declared, and presently he withdrew to the little drawing-room. In about a quarter of an hour, as he had expected, the door opened, and Selingman entered. He crossed the room at once to where Norgate was writing and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
“Young man,” he said, “I wish to talk with you. Bring your chair around. Sit there so that the light falls upon your face. So! Now let me see. Where does that door lead to?”
“Into the secretary’s room, but it is locked,” Norgate told him.
“So! And the outer one I myself have carefully closed. We talk here, then, in private. This is great news which you have brought this afternoon.”
“It is naturally of some interest to me,” Norgate assented, “but I scarcely see—”
“It is of immense interest, also, to me,” Selingman interrupted. “It may be that you do not know this at present. It may be that I anticipate, but if so, no matter. Between you and your fiancee there will naturally be no secrets. You are perhaps already aware that she holds a high position amongst those who are working for the power and development and expansion of our great empire?”
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