A Fool and His Money Part 43

"But your mother? You can't leave her here."

"You will have to smuggle her out of the castle a day or two in advance.

It is all thought out, Mr. Smart."

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, with more irascibility than I intended to show.

"If I succeed in doing all that is expected of me, I certainly will be ent.i.tled to more than an invitation to come and see you in New York."

She arose and laid her fingers upon my bandaged hand. The reckless light had died out of her eyes.

"I have thought that out, too, Mr. Smart," she said, quietly. "And now, good-bye. You will come up to see Mr. Bangs to-night?"

Considerably mystified by her remark, I said I would come, and then a.s.sisted her through the opening in the wall. She smiled back at me as the portrait swung into place.

What did she mean? Was it possible that she meant to have old man t.i.tus reward me in a pecuniary way? The very thought of such a thing caused me to double up my fist--my recently discovered fist!--and to swear softly under my breath. After a few moments I was conscious of a fierce pain in the back of my hand.

Bangs was a shrewd little Englishman. As I shook hands with him--using my left hand with a superfluous apology--I glanced at the top of his waistcoat. There was no b.u.t.ton missing.

"The Countess sewed it on for me," he said drily, reading my thoughts.

I stayed late with them, discussing plans. He had strongly advised against any attempt on Mrs. t.i.tus's part to enter her daughter's hiding-place, but had been overruled. I conceived the notion, too, that he was a very strong-minded man. What then must have been the strength of Mrs. t.i.tus's resolution to overcome the objections he put in her way?

He, too, had thought it all out. Everybody seems to have thought everything out with a single exception,--myself. His plan was not a bad one. Mrs. t.i.tus and her sons were to enter the castle under cover of night, and I was to meet them in an automobile at a town some fifteen kilometers away, where they would leave the train while their watchers were asleep, and bring them overland to Schloss Rothhoefen. They would be accompanied by a single lady's maid and no luggage. A chartered motor boat would meet us up the river a few miles, and--well, it looked very simple! All that was required of me was a willingness to address her as "Mother" and her sons as "brothers" in case there were any questions asked.

This was Tuesday. They were coming on Thursday, and the train reached the station mentioned at half-past twelve at night. So you will see it was a jolly arrangement.

I put Mr. Bangs up in my best guest-chamber, and, be it said to my credit, the Countess did not have to suggest it to me. As we said good night to her on the little landing at the top of the stairs, she took my bandaged paw between her two little hands and said:

"You will soon be rid of me forever, Mr. Smart. Will you bear with me patiently for a little while longer?" There was a plaintive, appealing note in her voice. She seemed strangely subdued.

"I can bear with you much easier than I can bear the thought of being rid of you," I said in a very low voice. She pressed my clumsy hand fiercely, and I felt no pain.

"You have been too good to me," she said in a very small voice. "Some day, when I am out of all this trouble, I may be able to tell you how much I appreciate all you have done for me."

An almost irresistible--I was about to say ungovernable--impulse to seize her in my arms came over me, but I conquered it and rushed after Mr. Bangs, as blind as a bat and reeling for a dozen steps or more.

It was a most extraordinary feeling.

I found myself wondering if pa.s.sion had that effect on all men. If this was an ill.u.s.tration of what a real pa.s.sionate love could do to a sensible, level-headed person, then what, in heaven's name, was the emotion I had characterised as love during my placid courts.h.i.+p of the faintly remembered typewriter? There had been no such blinding, staggering sensation as this. No thoughts of physical contact with my former inamorata had left me weak and trembling and dazed as I was at this historic moment.

Bangs was chattering in his glib English fas.h.i.+on as we descended to my study, but I did not hear half that he said. He looked surprised at two or three of the answers I made to his questions, and I am sure there were several of them that I didn't respond to at all. He must have thought me an unmannerly person.

One remark of his brought me rather sharply to my senses. I seemed capable of grasping its awful significance when all the others had gone by without notice.

"If all goes well," he was saying, "she should be safely away from here on the fourteenth. That leaves less than ten days more, sir, under your hospitable roof."

"Less than ten days," I repeated. This was the fifth of the month. "If all goes well. Less than ten days."

Again I pa.s.sed a sleepless night. A feeling of the utmost loneliness and desolation grew up within me. Less than ten days! And then she would be "safely away" from me. She and Rosemary! There was a single ray of brightness in the gloom that shrouded my thoughts: she had urged me to fly away with her. She did not want to leave me behind to face the perils after she was safely out of them. G.o.d bless her for thinking of that!

But of course what little common sense and judgment I had left within me told me that such a course was entirely out of the question. I could not go away with her. I could do no more than to see her safely on her way to the queer little port on the east coast of Italy. Then I should return to my bleak, joyless castle,--to my sepulchre,--and suffer all the torments of the d.a.m.ned for days and weeks until word came that she was actually safe on the other side of the Atlantic.

What courage, what pluck she had! Criminal? No, a thousand times, no!

She was claiming her own, her dearest own. The devil must have been in the people who set themselves up as judges to condemn her for fighting so bravely for that which G.o.d had given her. Curse them all!

... I fear that my thoughts became more and more maudlin as the interminable night went on.

Always they came back to the sickening realisation that I was to lose her in ten days, and that my castle would be like a tomb.

Of course the Hazzards and the Billy Smiths were possible panaceas, but what could they bring to ease the pangs of a secret nostalgia?

Nothing but their own blissful contentment, their own happiness to make my loneliness seem all the more horrible by contrast. Would it not be better for me to face it alone? Would it not be better to live the life of a hermit?

She came to visit me at twelve o'clock the next day. I was alone in the study. p.o.o.pend.y.k.e was showing Mr. Bangs over the castle.

She was dressed in a gown of some soft grey material, and there was a bunch of violets at her girdle.

"I came to dress your hand for you," she said as I helped her down from Red Ludwig's frame.

Now I have neglected to mention that the back of my hand was swollen to enormous proportions, an unlovely thing.

"Thank you," I said, shaking my head; "but it is quite all right.

Britton attended to it this morning. It is good of you to think about it, Countess. It isn't--"

"I thought about it all night," she said, and I could believe her after the light from the windows had fallen upon her face. There were dark circles under her eyes and she was quite pale. Her eyes seemed abnormally large and brilliant. "I am so sorry not to be able to do one little thing for you. Will you not let me dress it after this?"

I coloured. "Really, it--it is a most trifling bruise," I explained, "just a little black and blue, that's all. Pray do not think of it again."

"You will never let me do anything for you," she said. Her eyes were velvety. "It isn't fair. I have exacted so much from you, and--"

"And I have been most brutal and unfeeling in many of the things I have said to you," said I, despairingly. "I am ashamed of the nasty wounds I have given you. My state of repentance allows you to exact whatsoever you will of me, and, when all is said and done, I shall still be your debtor. Can you--will you pardon the coa.r.s.e opinions of a conceited a.s.s? I a.s.sure you I am not the man I was when you first encountered me."

She smiled. "For that matter, I am not the same woman I was, Mr. Smart.

You have taught me three things, one of which I may mention: the subjection of self. That, with the other two, has made a new Aline t.i.tus of me. I hope you may be pleased with the--transfiguration."

"I wish you were Aline t.i.tus," I said, struck by the idea.

"You may at least be sure that I shall not remain the Countess Tarnowsy long, Mr. Smart," she said, with a very puzzling expression in her eyes.

My heart sank. "But I remember hearing you say not so very long ago that you would never marry again," I railed.

She regarded me rather oddly for a moment. "I am very, very glad that you are such a steady, sensible, practical man. A vapid, impressionable youth, during this season of propinquity, might have been so foolish as to fall in love with me, and that would have been too bad."

I think I glared at her. "Then,--then, you are going to marry some one?"

She waited a moment, looking straight into my eyes.

"Yes," she said, and a delicate pink stole into her cheek, "I am going to marry some one."

I muttered something about congratulating a lucky dog, but it was all very hazy to me.