The Avenger (Oppenheim)/Chapter 27
THE SPY
WRAYSON found himself a few minutes later alone with the Baron, who, with some solemnity, rose and took the chair opposite to him. Conversation between them, however, languished, for the Baron spoke only in monosyllables, and his attitude gave Wrayson the idea that he viewed his presence at the chateâu with disfavour. With stiff punctiliousness, he begged Wrayson to try some wonderful Burgundy, and passed a box of cigarettes. He did not, however, open any topic of conversation, and Wrayson, embarrassed in his choice of subjects by the fact that any remark he could make might sound like an attempt at gratifying his curiosity, remained also silent. In a very few minutes the Baron rose.
"You will take another glass of wine, sir?" he asked.
Wrayson rose too with alacrity, and bowed his refusal. They recrossed the great hall and entered the drawing-room. Louise and Madame de Melbain were talking earnestly together in a corner, and from the look that the latter threw at him as they entered, Wrayson was convinced that in some way he was concerned with the subject of their conversation. It was a look deliberate and scrutinizing, in a sense doubtful, and yet not unkindly. Behind it all, Wrayson felt that there was something which he could not understand, there was something of the mystery in those dark sad eyes which seemed to pervade the whole atmosphere of the place and the lives of these people.
Louise rose as he approached and motioned him to take her vacated place.
"Madame de Melbain would like to talk to you for a few moments," she said quietly. "Afterwards will you come on to the terrace?"
She swept away through the open window, and was at once followed by the Baron. Mademoiselle de Courcelles was playing very softly on a grand piano in an unseen corner of the apartment. Wrayson and his hostess were alone.
She turned towards him with a faint smile. She spoke with great deliberation, but very clearly, and there was in her voice some hidden quality, indefinable in words, yet both musical and singularly attractive.
"I shall not keep you very long, Mr. Wrayson," she said. "Louise has been talking to me about you. She is happy, I think, to have found a friend so chivalrous and so discerning."
Wrayson smiled doubtfully as he answered.
"It is very little that I have been able to do for her," he said. "My complaint is that she will not give me the opportunity of doing more."
"You are too modest," Madame de Melbain said slowly. "Louise has told me a good deal. I think that you have been a very faithful friend."
Wrayson bowed but said nothing. If Madame de Melbain had anything to say to him, he preferred to afford her the opportunity of an attentive silence.
"Louise and I," Madame de Melbain continued, "were school friends. So you see that I have known her all my life. She has had her troubles, as I have! Only mine are a righteous judgment upon me, and hers she has done nothing to deserve. It is the burden of others which she fastens upon her back."
Wrayson felt instinctively that his continued silence was what she most desired. She was speaking to him, but her eyes had travelled far away. It was as though she had come into touch with other and greater things.
"Louise has not told me everything," she continued. "There is much that she will not confess. So it is necessary, Mr. Wrayson, that I ask you a question. Do you care for her?"
"I do!" Wrayson answered simply.
"You wish to marry her?"
"To-morrow, if she would!"
Madame de Melbain leaned a little forward. Her cheeks were still entirely colourless, but some spark of emotion glittered in her full dark eyes.
"You will be alone with her presently. Try and persuade her to marry you at once. There is nothing but an absurd scruple between you! Remember that always."
"It is a scruple which up till now has been too strong for me," Wrayson remarked quietly.
She measured him with her eyes, as though making a deliberate estimate of his powers.
"A man," she said, "should be able to do much with the woman whom he cares for—the woman who cares for him."
"If I could believe that," he murmured.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. He understood the gesture.
"You are right," he declared, with more confidence. "I will do my best."
She moved her head slowly, a sign of assent, also of dismissal. He rose to his feet.
"Louise is on the terrace," she said. "Will you give me your arm? The Baron is there also. We will join them."
They stepped through the high French windows on to the carpeted terrace. It seemed to Wrayson that they had passed into a veritable land of enchantment. The service of dinner had been a somewhat leisurely affair, and the hour was already late. The moon was slowly rising behind the trees, but the landscape was at present wrapped in the soft doubtful obscurity of a late twilight. The flowers, with whose perfume the air was faintly fragrant, remained unseen, or visible only in blurred outline; the tall trees, whose tops were unstirred by even the slightest breeze, stood out like silent sentinels against the violet sky. Madame de Melbain stopped short upon the threshold of the terrace, with head slightly thrown back, and half-closed eyes.
"Suzanne was right," she murmured, "there is peace here—peace, if only it would last!"
The Baron came hastily forward. He seemed to be eyeing Wrayson a little doubtfully. Madame de Melbain pointed down the avenue.
"I think," she said, "that it would be pleasant to walk for a little way. Give me your arm, Baron. We will go first. Mr. Wrayson will follow with Louise."
They descended the steps, crossed the lawn, and through a gate into the broad grass-grown avenue, cut through the woods to the road. Wrayson at first was silent, and Louise seemed a little nervous. More than once she started at the sound of a rabbit scurrying through the undergrowth. There was something a little mysterious about the otherwise profound silence of the impenetrable woods. Even their footsteps fell noiselessly upon the spongy turf.
Wrayson spoke at last. They had fallen sufficiently far behind the others to be out of earshot.
"Do you know what Madame de Melbain has been saying to me?" he asked.
Louise turned her head a little. There was the faintest flicker of a smile about her lips.
"I cannot imagine," she declared, looking once more straight ahead.
"She has been inciting me to bold deeds," Wrayson said. "How should you like to be carried off in mediæval fashion—married, willing or unwilling?"
"Is that what Madame de Melbain has been recommending you to do?" she asked.
He nodded.
"Yes! And I am thinking of taking her advice," he said coolly.
She laughed quietly, yet his ears were quick, and he caught the note of sadness which a moment later crept into her eyes.
"It would solve so much that is troublesome, wouldn't it?" she remarked. "May I ask if that has been the sole topic of your conversation?"
"Absolutely! Louise! Dear!"
She turned a little towards him. His voice was compelling. The fingers of her hand closed readily enough upon his, and the soft touch thrilled him.
"You have some fancy in your brain," he said, in a low, passionate whisper. "It is nothing but a fancy, I am assured. You have heard what your own friend has advised. You don't doubt that I love you, Louise, that I want to make you happy."
She leaned a little towards him. A sudden wave of abandonment seemed to have swept over her. He drew her face to his and kissed her with a sudden passion. Her lips met his soft and unresisting. Already he felt the song of triumph in his heart. She was his! She could never be anybody else's now. Very softly she disengaged herself. The other two were still in sight, and already the curve of the moon was creeping over the trees.
"Don't spoil it," she murmured. "Don't talk of to-morrow, or the future! We have to-night."...
There followed minutes of which he took no count, and then of a sudden her hand clutched his arm.
"Listen," she whispered hoarsely.
He came suddenly down to earth. They were walking in the shadow of the trees, close to the side of the wood, and their footsteps upon the soft turf were noiseless. Wrayson almost held his breath as he leaned towards the dark chaos of the thickly planted trees. Only a few yards away he could distinctly hear the dry snapping of twigs. Some one was keeping pace with them inside the wood, now he could see the stooping figure of a man creeping stealthily along. A little exclamation broke from Louise's lips.
"It is a spy after all," she muttered. "They said that every entrance to the place was guarded."
Wrayson had time to take only one quick step towards the wood, when a shrill cry rang out upon the still night. Then there was the trampling under foot of bushes and undergrowth, the sound of men's voices, one English and threatening, the other guttural and terrified. Madame de Melbain and her escort had paused and were looking back. Louise was moving towards them, and Wrayson was on the point of entering the wood. Into the little semicircle formed by these four people there suddenly strode Wrayson's friend from the inn, grasping by the collar a shrinking and protesting figure in a much dishevelled tweed suit.
"We were right, Mr. Wrayson," the former remarked quietly. "This fellow has been spying round all day. You had better ask your friends what they wish done with him."