Читать книгу The Prince of the Captivity - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 7

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“Oh, the dear cunning things! They’re just too sweet for words!”

Maimie was standing before the gate of St Mary Windicotes churchyard, contemplating, with a rapt expression of ecstasy, the two huge laurel-wreathed skulls, carved in stone, now hideously blackened with time, which crowned the high gate-posts. The clerk’s wife, unaware that in seeing these skulls the visitor was fulfilling one of her dearest and creepiest early hopes, felt that the grisly objects were not being treated with proper respect.

“They ain’t no figures of fun, miss. It’s what we all ’ave to come to,” she observed reprovingly. “Not but what old Mr Cowell opposite did say, when there was a talk of takin’ of ’em down and puttin’ up common stone balls like in their place, ‘Never a foot do I set within the church-door again if them death’s-’eads is took down,’ says he. ‘I’ve see ’em all my life as boy and man, and the church wouldn’t be the church without ’em.’ But there’s no call for strangers to be a-lovin’ of ’em, but only to remember their latter end, as may be sooner than they think.”

They were now walking up the path, itself flagged with gravestones, which led to the church-door, and Maimie noticed with something of a shudder the embattled rows of monuments on either hand, of all sizes and shapes and all manner of deviation from the perpendicular, and the ranges of displaced stones which lined the churchyard walls. For the moment she felt that she hated the place. How could people in their senses have had a wedding there? It was bound to turn out badly.

“And in that very pew there, as is now cleared away”—the clerk’s wife was concluding with much impressiveness a speech containing valuable historical information—“my mother see with her own eyes the great Dook of Wellington sit hevery Trinity Monday, for to ’ear the appointed sermon.”

This information was generally received with bated breath by visitors to the church, and the good woman was conscious of very natural disgust when Maimie responded to it merely with a casual “Is that so, really?” They had paused in the porch while the guide pointed out the modern representative of the fateful pew, but now she led the way in with a jangle of keys and a contemptuous sniff. Maimie devoured the scene with eager eyes. The fine dark oak carving in the chancel, the small oval window representing the Nativity, and the large window above it, decorated in stripes of crude colour—she knew them all, but there was something wanting.

“There ought to be pictures of Moses and Aaron there!” she cried, pointing to the chancel, “and right high up on that wall a big shadowy picture of some old king or queen, in a great gold frame.”

“Well, now, to think of you knowin’ that!” the clerk’s wife was somewhat mollified; “and you must ’a been rare and small when you left the parish, miss, for me not to remember you.”

“I’ve never been here in my life before, but I heard all about the church in America,” said Maimie breathlessly. “What’s come to the pictures?”

“Why, Moses and Aaron is there still, miss, hid out of sight behind that there bed-furniture, as I calls it—and as like as two peas to my aunt’s best bed, as lived out Earlham way,” pointing to an elaborate curtain behind the communion-table. “That’s the new Vicar’s doin’”—Maimie felt her heart sink—“and her Majesty Queen Hann and the Royal Harms is both took down and made away with—despisin’ of dignities, as we’re told shall be.”

“But the registers are here yet, I suppose? and I can see about this marriage, any way?” asked Maimie anxiously, for the clerk was coming up the church, unorthodox corduroys marring the effect of his professional black coat. She had discovered from a board over his door that he was an undertaker in a small way on week-days, and it had been necessary to send a boy to summon him, while his wife led the way to the church.

“Oh yes, miss. No one can’t do nothing to them. Here’s Clegg just a-comin’. You step this way,” and Maimie was ushered into the vestry, a small room panelled throughout in dark oak. Light was admitted by two windows close under the ceiling, and the decorations were confined to a table of the Degrees of Affinity, and another, quite as long and a good deal more complicated, of burial fees. Presently the clerk arrived, and opened a huge safe built in the thickness of the wall and masked by the wainscoting.

“What might be the year of the marriage you was wishin’ to find, miss?” he asked, and Maimie noticed that the woman looked suspiciously at her when she answered. She had determined that she would give no clue to her identity, in case some evil chance should lead Mr Steinherz to revisit the church, but she foresaw that it might be difficult to maintain this reticence.

“And ’ave you any idea what part of the year would be likely, miss?” asked the clerk again, selecting a volume and laying it upon the table.

“May, somewhere near the 18th,” was the reply, greeted with a gasp by the clerk’s wife.

“And the names, miss? There was a good few weddin’s just about that time.”

“Joseph Bertram to Constance Lily Garland.” Maimie’s voice was shaking a little, but her excitement was nothing to that of the clerk’s wife.

“Now you just tell me who you are,” she said resolutely, interposing her substantial person between Maimie and the register. “You ain’t neither of them two foreign young ladies, that I’m certain, and you won’t tell me as you’re Mrs Bertram’s daughter—Miss Garland as was? What have you got to do with it?”

“My mother was at the wedding, and signed the register,” Maimie admitted.

“Then you ain’t got nothink to do with Mr Bertram’s family?—though why they should think to interfere at this time of day beats me.”

“’Ere it is, miss,” said the clerk. “Joseph Bertram to Constance Lily Garland, by the Vicar, May 19th. Do you wish a copy?”

Moving aside unwillingly, the woman allowed Maimie to approach the table. There was no question of a dream or hallucination here, at any rate. There was the entry, and as Maimie turned over the pages, there also was the slight discoloration of the inside of the cover which showed where a slip of paper had been pasted upon it. She ran her finger along the line, and resisted an eager desire to try and tear the slip off. When the clerk asked again whether she would like a certified copy of the entry, she was obliged to pause before answering. Without the addition which that piece of paper held concealed, the certificate was of comparatively little value; and yet, supposing that by some accident or otherwise the church should be destroyed and the register with it, might not the copy just suffice to establish the marriage? Knowing nothing of Somerset House and its requirements, Maimie saw herself the dea ex machinâ in the restoration of Mr Steinherz to his original position, and replied unhesitatingly that she would have a copy. While the clerk was making it out, she stood looking with a vague awe at the pile of registers remaining in the safe. Was there still among those dusty volumes with their ragged edges the one which, as Mrs Steinherz had told with bated breath, contained records of many burials distinguished by the letters “Pl.,” denoting a victim of the Great Plague? But the clerk’s wife was not content to waste such an opportunity, and interrupted her meditations.

“And so your ma—Miss Slazenger as she were then—signed there, did she, miss?” indicating the rudely formed letters in which a hand accustomed only to the German character had inscribed an unfamiliar name. “Mrs Cotton she took to her wonderful, just the same as to Miss Garland. It do seem a pity as you shouldn’t have come before she left the parish, after all the many times she have said to me, ‘Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘I would give a deal to know what become of Mr and Mrs Bertram after all, that I would.’”

“Then Mrs Cotton is not dead?” asked Maimie eagerly.

“Why, whatever give you that hidea, miss? The Vicar ’ad a stroke and give up the parish, and they lives down at Whitcliffe now. This last summer as ever was, they arsk Clegg and me down for the day, and took us for a ride in a carriage, and give us tea in the garden, just like ladies and gentlemen—though if you arsk me, I say give me an ’ouse, or even a harbour, the grass bein’ damp and spiders about.”

“Could you give me Mrs Cotton’s direction?”

“To be sure I could, miss—Windicotes, Cavendish Road, Whitcliffe-on-Sea. But, miss, if you’re lookin’ for witnesses to swear to that there weddin’, don’t you forget that me and Clegg was there just as much as Mrs Cotton and the Vicar, him givin’ the bride away and me ready with a bottle of salts in case of the ladies’ bein’ overcome. Why, Mrs Cotton she says to me herself that morning, ‘Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘don’t you let your Tommy go to school to-day, and I’ll make it up to him’; and if she didn’t set him to play marbles just outside the churchyard gate, sayin’ that if he saw a cab drive up, or so much as any strangers comin’ along, he was to run in and whisper to her at once, ‘and then, Mrs Clegg,’ says she, ‘you and me will fasten the church-door and pile the forms against it until Mr Cotton have finished the service, sooner nor let those dear young people be separated before they’re properly married, for it’s in my mind as Mr Bertram’s cruel relations will try to part ’em at the last.’ And I was that worked up with the thought of Miss Garland bein’ dragged off shriekin’ to one of them convents, and that nice young gentleman her ’usband—for a fine military-lookin’ gentleman he was, though a trifle ’aughty in speakin’—throwed into chains and a dungeon, that I ’id my broom be’ind the church-door, and I was ready to fight for ’em, I was. Not that anythink come of it, after all.” Mrs Clegg spoke with evident disappointment.

“I’ll remember,” said Maimie. “But don’t tell any one that I’ve been here, any way.” She folded up the certificate and placed it in her pocket-book, gave the clerk his fee, and prepared to go. “The cruel relations may show up yet, you know.”

“So they may, miss, but you may depend upon me and Clegg.” The clerk’s wife was now escorting her out of the church. “I see you know all about that bit of paper at the end of the book there, which I understand there’s property dependin’ on it. Now you’ll maybe ’ardly believe it, miss, but neither me nor Clegg have ever mentioned that slip to a livin’ soul, least of all to the new Vicar, as ain’t ashamed to walk about the parish in petticoats, and wearin’ a Roman mitre on his ’ead.”

The description was startling, but Maimie recognised the object of it when she was walking past the vicarage, having rid herself of Mrs Clegg by means of a gratuity. The green door in the high wall opened, and a tall thin man came out, wearing a cassock and a curious head-dress that seemed a cross between a Tam-o’-Shanter and a mortar-board. A youthful voice from the other side of the narrow street inquired shrilly, “Where did you get that ’at?” and a small boy scampered away as fast as his legs would carry him, while the new Vicar, with the air of a martyr, walked rapidly towards the church. As for Maimie, she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to restrain a peal of hysterical laughter, and turned her steps hastily towards the station. Her experiences of the morning seemed altogether too absurd and incongruous for real life, and in spite of the strained excitement with which she had set forth on her quest, the clergyman’s martyrlike aspect put the finishing touch to her helpless mirth. When she was safely in the train, and had allowed herself the luxury of a long laugh over this anti-climax to her adventure, she became suddenly serious, however.

“Now let me see,” she said severely to herself; “what have I gained, any way? Well, I know that Mr Steinherz and Aunt Connie were married at that church, and that there’s a slip of paper which may cover their secret. And I’ve found three witnesses certainly—four if the old Vicar’s mind isn’t affected by his stroke—who can testify to the marriage. I guess it’s just as well that the gentleman in the ‘Roman mitre’ wasn’t the Vicar when Pappa Steinherz went to enlist his sympathies. I don’t believe he has any; he might even have assisted to drag poor Aunt Connie shrieking to a convent. Well, but after all, it’s quite possible yet for Mr Steinherz to have made out that he was Prince Joseph of Arragon when he isn’t, or even to have invented the tale just to impress Lord Usk. I don’t think so, but I’m set on looking things in the face. Any way, I guess I can’t do anything towards clearing up the affair without Mr Steinherz’s help, or else the use of those relics that Mr Hicks has in charge. How am I to fix things? I have no pull on Pappa Steinherz, and if I make him mad he’ll just take Fay right away from me, and break my heart. I’ll have to wait. And yet something ought to be done right now, or some of those old folks that can swear to the marriage will be dying off. I wonder if I couldn’t take their evidence. No, I’m pretty certain it would need to be sworn to before a judge, and I daren’t have any other person come into the secret, even if I knew a judge to speak to. Well, I guess I must sit tight, and that’s all just now.”

Nevertheless, when she left the train at Charing Cross, and took a hansom mechanically to drive to the hotel, her brain busied itself with a fresh problem, which was yet an old one, the question of preventing an engagement between Usk and Félicia. Such an engagement would put an end once for all to her ambitious schemes for Félicia’s future, which seemed perfectly feasible in the light of the revelations of the night before. Not that either Maimie or Félicia herself would have cared much for the engagement, had there been a prospect of a more brilliant alliance, but it would give Mr Steinherz a vantage-ground of which he would make full use. Once Félicia was engaged, he would see that the engagement was fulfilled. He would hurry on the marriage, and never relax his vigilance until his daughter had become Viscountess Usk, and Félicia, in her present mood, would offer no opposition. The prospect of escaping from his tutelage, and feeling that she was her own mistress (Usk did not count), was far more attractive to her than Maimie’s lofty hopes. It seemed that there was no help for it, and Maimie decided reluctantly to bow to circumstances, and make herself so agreeable to Usk that he could not but approve of her friendship with Félicia. As she came to this decision, she was startled by meeting Usk and Mr Steinherz face to face. Her driver was trying to cross Oxford Street in the direction of Bloomsbury, but there was a block in the traffic, and an inexorable policeman detained the hansom close to one of those islands of refuge on which strange groups assemble by force of circumstances. Here stood Mr Steinherz and Usk, unable to penetrate the solid phalanx of vehicles which confronted them, and waiting with what patience they might while the policeman marshalled a train of old ladies and country cousins in readiness for a break in the line. They were the last people Maimie would have chosen to meet at such a moment, when that dreadful certificate seemed to be burning in her pocket.

“You are out pretty early, Maimie,” said Mr Steinherz.

“I——I came out on an errand for Félicia, way down in the City,” stammered Maimie, remembering for the first time that the errand had never been performed.

“You should have mailed the order. I don’t choose to have you running around for Félicia. You look just tired out.”

“I wish you had been with us just now, Miss Logan,” said Usk, changing the subject hastily, either on account of Maimie’s evident embarrassment or because he could not bear to hear Félicia blamed. “We came across the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim and an aide-de-camp poking about Trafalgar Square in mufti. Wasn’t it a good thing I had studied him so long yesterday, so that I could point him out to Mr Steinherz? But I did wish you and Miss Steinherz were there.”

Usk spoke fast and somewhat nervously. Maimie read in his face that the night had made no change in his feelings. He was prepared to marry Félicia and keep her in ignorance of her father’s descent, and Mr Steinherz was well pleased with his decision. Maimie felt that she hated them both.

“By the way,” said Mr Steinherz, “I guess I am in Félicia’s black books yet?” Maimie nodded, for she had left Félicia comfortably established in her room, with no intention of showing herself for the present. “Well, we lunch Lord Usk to-day, and he would be real sorry to miss her. Do you happen to know anything she wants right now?”

“Why, I guess one of those gold girdles with turquoise bosses would fix up her new Paris tea-gown to perfection,” said Maimie slowly, adding vengefully to herself, as she saw Usk redden, “I won’t let you down easy this time, Pappa Steinherz—talking that way about Fay before her best young man!”

“Then maybe you’ll intimate that I’m bringing along something of the sort when you get back,” said Mr Steinherz.

“Why, certainly. I guess you’ll find Regent Street the best place,” cried Maimie, as the cab moved on. It was some satisfaction to her to see the disappointment on Usk’s face. “He’s death on getting it over,” she said to herself; “and now Mr Steinherz will have him trail half-way round London before coming in.”

But her satisfaction was dashed with dismay when she remembered again the pair of dainty high-heeled slippers still reposing in her satchel. How could she account to Félicia for the morning which was to have been devoted to changing them? If she refused to give an explanation, or offered a lame one, she knew Félicia would never rest until she had solved the mystery. And if she guessed that Maimie did not wish Mr Steinherz to know what she had been doing, she would appeal to him sooner than allow herself to be foiled. There was a relentless malevolence about Félicia on these occasions, when Maimie was trying to deceive her purely for her own good, which Maimie felt deeply.

“I don’t dare go back without changing them,” she sighed to herself, and standing up, began an agitated colloquy with the driver.

“Can you get back to the City from here, hackman, right away?” she asked him. “There’s something I have forgotten.”

The man asked where she wanted to go, and then opined that the shop could easily be reached by way of Holborn. He turned at the first opportunity, and as they approached the corner Maimie caught sight of Mr Steinherz and Usk a second time, looking at some books in a shop-window. They had not gone far towards Regent Street, and Maimie laughed to herself as she thought of Usk’s impatience. When she looked round again, her attention was attracted by a man standing on the pavement at the corner, who was gazing—glaring was the word that occurred to her—across the street at the bookshop opposite. He was elderly and poorly dressed, and evidently a foreigner, with a ragged beard and unkempt hair.

“An Italian,” said Maimie to herself. “How he looks! like a lion stalking his prey. What can he be staring at, any way?”

As the thought crossed her mind, the man dashed suddenly into the street in front of the hansom, and seeming not to hear the lively remonstrances of the driver, who was obliged to pull up pointblank, threaded his way through the traffic to the opposite corner. Maimie, watching him carelessly through the side-window, saw him reach the pavement. What followed was done all in a moment. He took one step forward, there was the flash of something long and shining which fell and rose and fell again, and Mr Steinherz sank heavily against Usk. That was all Maimie saw, for her wild scream sent the horse, already startled by the sudden check, tearing down Holborn, and it seemed to her an eternity before the driver succeeded in stopping it, and turning back again at her frenzied entreaty. The irate policemen whose orders they had disregarded in their wild career, and the other drivers whose destruction they had sought to compass, took no notice of them as they returned; every one was running or looking in one direction. Even at that moment Maimie was conscious of a feeling of wonder as the crowd gathered. People came hurrying out of shops, pouring down side streets, rushing up from behind, and very soon the hansom could go no farther. Maimie waited in agony while the driver tried to force his horse through the crowd, and found herself the recipient of the confidence bestowed on a friend by a boy with a baker’s basket.

“I see ’im come runnin’ like mad, brandishin’ ’is drippin’ knife—as good as a theaytre. ’E run strite into the middle of the street, all among the ’orses, rarght in front of the dray. Blowed if ’e didn’t ’it out at the ’orses with the knife as ’e went down. ’E was gyme!”

“Say, who is it? what has happened?” gasped Maimie to a policeman, who found even his authority insufficient to clear a passage for him into the midst of the crowd, and was forced to content himself with ordering the people on its outskirts to move on. He answered civilly, and with obvious self-importance.

“An Eye-talian, miss, supposed to be a lunatic, that stabbed an American gentleman, and then threw himself under the ’orses’ feet.”

“But Mr Steinherz—the gentleman who was stabbed?” she cried. “I saw it all. What about him? He is my guardian.”

“You saw it, miss? Then I must trouble you for your name and address. You’ll be wanted at the inquest. They’re takin’ him to the ’orspital.”

“Oh, where is it? You’ll show me, officer, won’t you? But I guess I ought to go and fetch his daughter. You’ll let the hack through?”

“It’s no good, miss. I doubt myself if he’ll live to reach the gate. You had better send the cab away, and I’ll take you to the ’orspital.”

“Tell me about it, any way. What did you see?” Maimie asked feverishly, as the policeman pushed a way for her through the crowd, after she had dismissed the cab.

“All I saw as I come along Oxford Street was ten or twelve people round an old party as I thought was preachin’ on the pavement. I went to move ’em on, and a lady bursts out and ketches ’old of me that tight I couldn’t move. ‘Oh, policeman, policeman!’ she says; ‘murder! save him! fetch a doctor, quick!’ and ’olds me tight all the time, while the old chap goes on jawin’ to the crowd about a righteous vengeance and the task of his ’ole life, and his father bein’ shot and his mother turned out of doors in a winter’s night, and defyin’ anybody to arrest him, though he’d thrown down his knife. And then, all of a sudden, while I was strugglin’ to get free from the lady, he give a great yell and cried out, ‘It’s the wrong man—not the Archduke!’ and caught up a long knife with blood drippin’ from it off of the pavement, and went for the people. They made room for him pretty quick, I can tell you, and he rushed across into ’Olborn, and me after him. You’d have said he was mad if you’d seen him charge the traffic just like an army, as I did, and he’d near got through when he was knocked down by a dray. And there’s no need to take him to ’orspital. And what was it you saw, miss?”

“I just saw him standing on the side-walk and watching, and then he ran across and pulled out something, and struck—and struck—and then——” Maimie’s voice failed her.

“Case of mistaken hidentity,” remarked the policeman complacently, “but it’s not often those foreigners make mistakes. Now it’s a curious thing——”

But Maimie was not destined to receive further enlightenment from his stores of wisdom, for they had arrived at the hospital gate by this time, and Usk was coming out of it, looking like a man who was going to be hanged.

“He’s gone!” he said heavily, in answer to Maimie’s gasp of inquiry—“died just as they carried him in. But you’re here—and you know all about it—you’ll be able to tell Félicia. I didn’t know how to break it to her. I was trying to think what I should say if I had to tell Phil that our father was dead. But you’re a woman, you know how to put things, you can soften it to her——”

“Oh, I can’t! I daren’t!” cried Maimie, shrinking back. Then she remembered in a flash that if she threw the burden of the disclosure upon Usk, it would be a tacit recognition of his position with regard to Félicia. No, he was not engaged to her yet, and if Maimie could help it, the engagement should not take place.

“I guess I’ll have to do it,” she said resolutely.

“I’ll take you back to the hotel,” said Usk. “The policeman will call a hansom, for I’m sure you can’t walk.”

“Tell me just what happened. Who was the man?” asked Maimie breathlessly, when they were in the cab.

“I can’t tell you. It was all so awfully sudden. We were looking in at a shop-window, when suddenly some one shouted out something in Italian behind us—about his father and mother, I think—and I heard two blows struck, and Mr Steinherz gave a kind of gasp, and fell against me. I tried to lift him up and stop the bleeding, and people were standing round staring, and the man who had done it kept talking, talking, in English. But when I got Mr Steinherz’s head on my shoulder, so that his face showed, the man gave a yell and dashed away. They say there’s no doubt he mistook him for the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim, and it’s curious that last night I noticed there was a distinct likeness between them from behind, but not the very least in front.”

“I would just love to tell you that I know exactly as much as you do!” thought Maimie enviously. Aloud she merely said, “And Mr Steinherz?”

“A doctor came up, and said he was stabbed in the lungs, and couldn’t possibly live. He tried to speak, though the doctor told him not, but he could only get out a few disjointed words. And just as they got him into the receiving-room he died.”

They had reached the hotel now, and Usk waited in the sitting-room while Maimie went to look for Félicia. It was more than an hour before she came back, and in the interval Usk was a prey to all kinds of interruptions. In order to spare the girls, he made all the arrangements he could without direct authority from them; other matters he put aside resolutely, refusing to allow Miss Steinherz to be troubled at present. When Maimie returned she looked so old and harassed that he was shocked.

“How is she?” he asked anxiously.

“Quieter now; I’ve given her a sleeping-draught. But it’s been terrible. Her nerves are pretty highly strung, and she screamed fit to make your blood run cold. And I know there are millions of things to do, and I can’t tell the way they fix them over here. Say, Lord Usk, you oughtn’t to be here, any way; people will talk, you know they will. Folks in England are so censorious. Do, please, go right away. It makes me nervous to see you there.”

Usk obeyed, with apparent willingness, for a splendid idea had entered his head. He went straight to the nearest post-office, and telegraphed to the Marchioness of Caerleon at Llandiarmid Castle.

“‘Terrible accident to Mr Steinherz. Daughter quite prostrate. Can you come?’” He read over the message. “That’ll bring her,” he muttered. “And I never knew the people yet that the mater couldn’t comfort when they were in trouble.”

As he put the change into his pocket he felt a paper there. Taking it out, he found it was the envelope Mr Steinherz had given him the night before, to be opened after his death. The time had come already, he realised with awe. Stepping aside, he opened the envelope, and drew out a cutting from a newspaper.

“Great consternation has been caused in august circles in Vindobona by the reported reappearance of the Grey Lady of the Hohenstaufens. The scene of the apparition was the portion of the Imperial Schloss known as the Arragon-Palast, which is occupied by the Prince of Arragon, titular King of Cantabria, and his family, when the Court is at Vindobona, and it is alleged that the ghost-seer, a sentinel on duty, is absolutely convinced of the reality of the sight, which is believed to portend an approaching death in the House of Hohenstaufen. The last recorded appearance of the Grey Lady in this portion of the Schloss took place prior to the death of the late King Paul of Cantabria, which occurred at an advanced age ten years ago. The king was connected with the Hohenstaufens through his mother, who was a Pannonian archduchess.”