Part 43 (1/2)

”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.