Читать книгу Tales of Mystery & Espionage: 21 Spy Thrillers in One Edition - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 35

Table of Contents

The Marchese Marius di Vasena, Italian Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, threw himself into an easy-chair with a sigh of relief. This was the moment for which he had been waiting more or less patiently since the night when he had sheltered Martin Fawley, and Fawley in return had taken him a little way into his confidence, had raised for him with careful and stealthy fingers the curtain which shrouded a Utopian future…From outside the folding doors came the sound of floods of music distant and near at hand, the shuffling of feet, the subdued hum of happy voices, the fluttering of women’s dresses like the winged passage of a flock of doves.

“We make history, my friends,” the Marchese exclaimed, with a gesture which would have been dramatic if he himself, like most of the diplomats and politicians of the five countries, had not been somewhat overtired.

“What sort of chapter in the world’s history, I wonder,” Prince von Fürstenheim, German Ambassador, speculated. “I have been present at many functions organised to celebrate the launching of a new war. I have never yet heard of a great entertainment like this given to celebrate the coming of perpetual peace. How can there be perpetual peace? Is it not that we mock ourselves?”

“I do not think so,” Willoughby Johns declared. “There has never before been such a unanimous and vociferous European Press. This pact of ours, through its sheer simplicity, seems to have touched the imagination of millions.”

The great ball at the American Embassy to celebrate the formal signing of the greatest of written documents since the Magna Charta was in full swing. The Marchese, however, felt that he had done his duty. A young Prince connected with the Royal House, whom he had been asked to look after, was safely established in the ballroom outside. He himself had kissed the fingers of his hostess and paid his devoirs to the Ambassador some time ago. He was forming one now of a parti carré with the Right Honourable Willoughby Johns, the English Premier, Prince von Fürstenheim, German Ambassador, and Monsieur Vallauris, the newly appointed delegate of his country from the Quai d’Orsay.

“I tell you what it is,” the latter remarked, in an outburst half-cynical, half-humorous. “We ambassadors have cut our own throats. What I mean is this. There is no work to be done—no reason for our small army of secretaries and typists. Diplomacy will become a dead letter. Commerce! Commerce! Commerce! That is all our people, at any rate, think about. My visitors, my correspondents, all have to do with matters which concern our consular department.”

“Capital!” Willoughby Johns commented. “I always thought that the two establishments—diplomatic and commercial—should be joined up.”

“Nowadays,” Von Fürstenheim pronounced, “there is as much diplomacy in dealing with the commerce of our country as was ever required in the settlement of weightier affairs.”

“It is a new era upon which we enter,” the Marchese declared.

“I ask myself and you,” Vallauris propounded, “what is to be the reward which will be offered to this almost unknown person who first of all conceived the idea of the pact and then carried it through?”

“Perhaps I can answer that question,” Willoughby Johns observed, lighting a fresh cigarette. “It has been rather a trouble to all of us. What are you to do with a man who is himself a multimillionaire, who cannot accept a title because he is an American and whose sole desire seems to be to step back into obscurity? However, between us—the Marchese and myself—we have done all that is humanly possible. I, or rather my Cabinet, we have presented him with an island and the Marchese has given him a wife.”

“An island?” Vallauris repeated, a trifle bewildered.

Willoughby Johns nodded assent.

“The island,” he confided, “is the most beautiful one—although of course it is very small—ever owned by the British Government, and the Princess Elida di Rezco di Vasena, the niece of our friend here, is, I think, quite one of the most beautiful of his country-women I have ever seen.”

“An island,” the Frenchman, who like most of his compatriots was of a social turn of mind, repeated incredulously. “Fancy wanting to live on an island!”

The Marchese smiled. There was a strange look in his eyes, for he, too, had known romance.

“You have never met my niece, Monsieur Vallauris,” he observed.

EPILOGUE

Through the driving grey mists of the Channel, battling her way against the mountainous seas of the Bay of Biscay, emerging at last into the rolling waters of the Straits and the sunshine of Gibraltar, the famous yacht Espèrance seemed, in a sense, to be making one of those allegorical voyages of the Middle Ages, dimly revealed in ancient volumes of fable and verse. Something of the same spirit had, perhaps, already descended upon her two passengers—Martin Fawley and Elida—as they passed into the warm tranquillity of the Mediterranean. After the turmoil of the last few months, a sort of dreaming inertia seemed to have gathered them into her bosom. They were never tired of sitting in their favourite corner on deck, searching the changing sea by day and the starlit or cloud-bespattered sky by night, indulging in odd little bursts of spasmodic conversation, sometimes breaking a silence Elida, for her part declared, with the sole purpose of assuring herself that the whole affair was not a dream.

In the long daylight hours a new gaiety seemed to have come to her. She was restless with her happiness. She moved about the ship the very spirit of joy—light-footed, a miracle of grace and fantastic devotion to her very little more sedate lover. With the coming of night, however, her mood changed. She needed reassurance—Martin’s arm and lips, the deep obscurity of their retired resting place. There was excitement in the very throbbing of the engines. There were times when she felt herself shivering with the tremors of repressed passion. Martin surprised himself at the effortless facility with which, at such times, he played the part of lover and husband. With him, too, it seemed, after the hurricane of a stormy life, the opening of the great book of peace and romance…

It was seldom that they spoke of the immediate past. Both seemed equally convinced that it belonged to two utterly different people who would some day slowly awaken into life, rubbing their eyes. Patches of those colourful days, however, would sometimes present themselves. One morning Elida discovered her husband with a powerful telescope, watching the distant land. She paused by his side—a silent questioner.

“Somewhere amongst that nest of mountains,” he pointed out, with a grim smile of reminiscence, “is a French Colonel—a fine little chap and I should think a thorough soldier—the desire of whose life it was to see me with a bandage over my eyes, against his whitewashed barrack walls, facing a squad of his picked rifle shots! Nearly came off, too!”

She shivered and half closed her eyes. He understood that she was shutting out Europe from the field of her vision. He closed the telescope with a little snap.

“We both had our escapes,” he remarked. “Berati was out for your blood once…It is my watch,” he added, listening to the bell. “Come with me on the bridge for an hour.”

She passed her arm through his and they mounted the steps together. The third officer made his report, saluted and withdrew. For several minutes afterwards no words passed. Fawley, leaning a little forward over the canvas-screened rail, scanned the horizon with seaman’s vision. At such times a sort of graven calm came to his features, a new intensity to his keenly searching eyes. The blood of his seafaring ancestors revealed itself. Deliberately, it seemed as though of natural habit, he examined with meticulous care every yard of the grey tossing waters. Only when he felt himself master of the situation did his features relax. He smiled down at Elida, drew her hand through his arm and commenced their nightly promenade.

Silence on the bridge. Sometimes he wondered whether they were not both grateful for that stern commandment of the sea. At ordinary times they were overwhelmed with the happiness which was always seeking to express itself. The silences of night were wonderful. The forced silences of the day were like an aching relief. A few paragraphs in a modern novel which she had passed to him with a smile contained sentences which struck home to them both.

* * * * *

The self-consciousness of the lover has increased enormously since the decay of Victorian sentimentalism. Allegorically speaking, it is only amongst the brainless and the lower orders of to-day that the man walks unashamed with his arm around his sweetheart’s waist, and both scorn to wait till the darkness for the mingling of lips. The affection of Edwin and Angelina of the modern world may be of the same order as that which inspired their great-grandmother and great-grandfather, but they seem to have lost the idea of how to set about it. In town this seems to be a fair idea of what goes on. Edwin and Angelina find themselves by accident alone.

“What about a spot of love-making, old dear?” Edwin suggested apprehensively.

“All right, old bean, but for heaven’s sake don’t let’s moon about alone! We’ll ring up Morris’ Bar and see if any of the crowd are over there.”

Or if the amorous couple happen to be in the country, the reply to the same question is a feverish suggestion that they try if the old bus will do over sixty, or rival bags of golf clubs are produced, or Edwin is invited to search for his gun and come along and see if there’s an odd rabbit sitting outside the woods…

* * * * *

Fawley closed the volume with a laugh.

“Let us be content to belong to the old-fashioned crowd,” he suggested. “You come anyhow of a race which expresses itself far more naturally than we Anglo-Saxons can, and whether I am self-conscious about it or not, I am not in the least ashamed of owning that I am absolutely and entirely in love with you.”

She stretched out her arms.

“Come and tell me so again, darling,” she invited. “Tell me so many times during the day. Do not let us care what any of these moderns are doing. Keep on telling me so.”

Which invitation and his prompt acceptance of it seemed to form the textbook of their wonderful cruise.

* * * * *

And then at last their voyage came to an end. In the pearly grey stillness before the dawn they found themselves one morning on deck, leaning over the rail, watching a dark mass ahead gradually take to itself definite shape. A lighthouse gave pale warning of a nearby harbour. The stars faded and a faint green light in the east broke into the coming day. They heard the ringing down of the engine behind. They were passing through the placid waters now at half speed. The shape and colour of that dark mass gradually resolved themselves. The glimmering light sank into obscurity. There were rolling woods and pine-topped hills surrounding the old-fashioned town of quaintly shaped buildings which they were slowly approaching. Behind there was a great sweep of meadowland—a broad ribbon of deep green turf—cut so many ages ago that it seemed as though it must have been a lordly avenue from all time. At the head was a dim vista of flower gardens surrounding the Castle, from the turrets of which the streaming flag had already caught the morning breeze. One other building towered over the little town—the cathedral—half in ruins, half still massive and important. As they drew nearer they could hear the chimes, the sound of bells floating over the water. He pressed her arm.

“No salute,” he warned her. “Some one told me there was not a gun upon

the island.”

“Is that not rather wonderful?” she whispered. “We have had all two people need of strife. The bells are better.”

They were near enough now to hear the birds in the woods which hung over the low cliffs. A flight of duck surprised them. The chiming of the bells grew more melodious. There was a little catch in her voice as her arms reached out for him.

“The people on the quay may see us but I do not care,” she whispered. “This is Paradise which we have found!”

THE END