The Great Impersonation, E. Phillips Oppenheim [finding audrey TXT] 📗

of the great quadrangular landing he stopped and stood with half-closed eyes for several moments. From downstairs he could hear the sound of pleasantly raised voices, the music of a piano in the distance, the click of billiard balls. He waited until he had regained his self-possession. Then, as he was on the point of descending, he saw Seaman mounting the stairs. At a gesture he waited for him, waited until he came, and, taking him by the arm, led him to a great settee in a dark corner. Seaman had lost his usual blitheness. The good-humoured smile played no longer about his lips.

“Where is Lady Dominey?” he asked.

“In my room, waiting until her own is prepared.”

Seaman’s manner was unusually grave.

“My friend,” he said, “you know very well that when we walk in the great paths of life I am unscrupulous. In those other hours, alas! I have a weakness⁠—I love women.”

“Well?” Dominey muttered.

“I will admit,” the other continued, “that you are placed in a delicate and trying position. Lady Dominey seems disposed to offer to you the affection which, notwithstanding their troubles together, she doubtless felt for her husband. I risk your anger, my friend, but I warn you to be very careful how you encourage her.”

A light flashed in Dominey’s eyes. For the moment angry words seemed to tremble upon his lips. Seaman’s manner, however, was very gentle. He courted no offence.

“If you were to take advantage of your position with⁠—with any other, I would shrug my shoulders and stand on one side, but this mad Englishman’s wife, or rather his widow, has been mentally ill. She is still weak-minded, just as she is tenderhearted. I watched her as she passed through the hall with you just now. She turns to you for love as a flower to the sun after a long spell of cold, wet weather. Von Ragastein, you are a man of honour. You must find means to deal with this situation, however difficult it may become.”

Dominey had recovered from his first wave of weakness. His companion’s words excited no sentiment of anger. He was conscious even of regarding him with a greater feeling of kindness than ever before.

“My friend,” he said, “you have shown me that you are conscious of one dilemma in which I find myself placed, and which I confess is exercising me to the utmost. Let me now advise you of another. The Princess Eiderstrom has brought me an autograph letter from the Kaiser, commanding me to marry her.”

“The situation,” Seaman declared grimly, “but for its serious side, would provide all the elements for a Palais Royal farce. For the present, however, you have duties below. I have said the words which were thumping against the walls of my heart.”

Their descent was opportune. Some of the local guests were preparing to make their departure, and Dominey was in time to receive their adieux. They all left messages for Lady Dominey, spoke of a speedy visit to her, and expressed themselves as delighted to hear of her return and recovery. As the last car rolled away, Caroline took her host’s arm and led him to a chimney seat by the huge log fire in the inner hall.

“My dear Everard,” she said, “you really are a very terrible person.”

“Exactly why?” he demanded.

“Your devotion to my sex,” she continued, “is flattering but far too catholic. Your return to England appears to have done what we understood to be impossible⁠—restored your wife’s reason. A fiery-headed Hungarian Princess has pursued you down here, and has now gone to her room in a tantrum because you left her side for a few minutes to welcome your wife. And there remains our own sentimental little flirtation, a broken and, alas, a discarded thing! There is no doubt whatever, Everard, that you are a very bad lot.”

“You are distressing me terribly,” Dominey confessed, “but all the same, after a somewhat agitated evening I must admit that I find it pleasant to talk with someone who is not wielding the lightnings. May I have a whisky and soda?”

“Bring me one, too, please,” Caroline begged. “I fear that it will seriously impair the note which I had intended to strike in our conversation, but I am thirsty. And a handful of those Turkish cigarettes, too. You can devote yourself to me with a perfectly clear conscience. Your most distinguished guest has found a task after his own heart. He has got Henry in a corner of the billiard-room and is trying to convince him of what I am sure the dear man really believes himself⁠—that Germany’s intentions towards England are of a particularly dove-like nature. Your Right Honourable guest has gone to bed, and Eddy Pelham is playing billiards with Mr. Mangan. Everyone is happy. You can devote yourself to soothing my wounded vanity, to say nothing of my broken heart.”

“Always gibing at me,” Dominey grumbled.

“Not always,” she answered quietly, raising her eyes for a moment. “There was a time, Everard, before that terrible tragedy⁠—the last time you stayed at Dunratter⁠—when I didn’t gibe.”

“When, on the contrary, you were sweetness itself,” he reflected.

She sighed reminiscently.

“That was a wonderful month,” she murmured. “I think it was then for the first time that I saw traces of something in you which I suppose accounts for your being what you are today.”

“You think that I have changed, then?”

She looked him in the eyes.

“I sometimes find it difficult to believe,” she admitted, “that you are the same man.”

He turned away to reach for his whisky and soda.

“As a matter of curiosity,” he asked, “why?”

“To begin with, then,” she commented, “you have become almost a precisian in your speech. You used to be rather slangy at times.”

“What else?”

“You used always to clip your final g’s.”

“Shocking habit,” he murmured. “I cured myself of that by reading aloud in the bush. Go on, please?”

“You carry yourself so much more stiffly. Sometimes you have the air of being surprised that you are not in uniform.”

“Trifles, all these things,” he