Winged Victory/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
There were thirty men at table. Of various ages, of various nationalities, they yet harmonized perfectly with one another and with their surroundings. They were essentially men of the world. There was not one who did not wear his evening clothes with the ease of custom, and the persistent stream of conversation, now in one language, now in another, never rising above a courteous level, bore the stamp of world travel and cultured acquaintance with every phase of life.
Villiers sat at his host's right hand. From his position he could see straight down the rose-tinted dining room to the open window, beyond which the Mediterranean shimmered in peaceful moonlight. The table was scattered with red roses, and their perfume had grown heavy, almost overpowering, in the dead atmosphere. Villiers picked up One of the blossoms and.smelled it luxuriously.
“We do not grow such flowers in England,” he said lightly. “It is intoxicating. I can imagine myself committing any folly with this near me. Are these your special product?”
Corodo smiled.
“They have been specially procured in your honor,” he said, with a little bow that was not quite English in its courteous formality. “They are, as you suggest, rare. My young friend, here, is past master in the art of cultivating such specimens. It is to him your compliments are due.”
Villiers glanced across the table at his vis-à-vis. The white, passionless face smiled back at him, and for a moment Villiers hesitated, uncomfortably touched by the old, intangible recollection.
“Surely we have met before,” he said abruptly.
“I think not.” The smile had not changed, and yet an indescribable cynicism had been added to its persistency. “At least, I have not met you, Mr, Villiers. A passing resemblance, perhaps?”
“Possibly. Yes, I remember now. It was a man I met in England—a Frenchman. I am glad it is no more than a resemblance, for I can remember that he spoiled my evening.”
“Indeed! Might his unfortunate double know how?”
“Permit me to fill your glass”
Villiers made a gesture of protest, but his host persisted with kindly earnestness.
“You must try this. It is my very best as rare as the roses. I am anxious for your opinion. You English have a clever palate. Is it not excellent?”
Villiers sipped curiously at the fiery liquid. The bouquet was unusual—fragrant and yet touched with bitterness. It seemed to go straight to the senses, soothing, and yet paralyzing. For an instant the words, “you English,” had caught his attention, but now they slipped from him into oblivion.
“It is wonderful. It might have been brewed in a witch's kitchen—or did the vine grow in the same soil as the roses?”
“They were at least near neighbors.”
The white-faced man leaned across the table. “And my double?” he asked.
Villiers laughed at his pertinacity, and the sound startled him. It rang curiously loud in his own ears.
“We quarreled over a matter of opinion,” he said. “My Frenchman insisted that patriotism was a mere question of pounds, shillings, and pence. As an ill-paid English lieutenant, I felt I had a right to dispute the statement. As usual, neither convinced the other, and I, at least, was seriously irritated.”
“And with reason. And yet”—Corodo leaned back with an air of impartiality—“what is patriotism? Little more than vainglory, an egoist's belief in the greatness of his country because he was born in it. Can we not conceive greater things?”
“For my part—I can't.”
“You can't, for instance, conceive yourself changing your allegiance?”
“No.”
“Not even were you discarded and dishonored by your own race?”
Villiers shook his head. A challenging retort had risen to his lips, but his tongue felt strangely heavy, and a kind of indifference had come over him. Yet the question had been grave, almost ominous.
“No,” he said. “I can't—conceive an absurdity.”
Corodo smiled. At that moment a servant had entered and laid a sealed letter quietly at his master's elbow. Corodo glanced at it and slipped it into his pocket.
“A business letter,” he said lightly. “It will keep. I do not attend to business on a night like this.” He caught Villiers' involuntary glance, and the kindly amusement in his deep-set eyes brightened. “Ours is different, Mr. Villiers. If I may, I will keep you a little later. After my other guests are gone, we will go into matters finally to-night. In the meantime, may I propose a couple of toasts? In the first place, in honor of him whose birthday we celebrate to-night—my son!”
The thirty glasses were raised in silence. Villiers glanced heavily from face to face. He was conscious of having asked a question, though he had not heard his own voice. The answer came back clearly:
“No, my son is not here—he is never here. But I like to celebrate him none the less. And now, gentlemen, for my second toast! To the luck of the great monoplane and to its inventor!”
Again the silent, almost mechanical acceptance of the toast. Villiers rose to his feet. The thirty pairs of eyes were on him, fixed in unsmiling, critical curiosity. And suddenly a swift realization pierced the cloud of apathy that was closing down upon him. He was alone—intensely alone. There was danger in the air—a silent, watchful antagonism. He had the feeling of having been trapped, smothered under a weight of stifling vapors—forced to the brink of a precipice which was yet hidden from him. He fought desperately, and in the helpless groanings of his mind he caught hold of a supreme, dominating thought. He raised his glass high above his head.
“To my country!” he said. “To England!”
He drank the wine to the dregs. He did not know whether or not there had been a response. From a long way off he heard the soft clink of a broken glass and a sudden roar. It was as if the sea under the moonlight had risen suddenly and poured in upon them, swallowing up in a smooth-flowing, dull immensity all sound, all light, all consciousness
He awoke suddenly. Something sharp had cut through the opaque darkness that hugged him about, and through the widening breach a thin, sickly twilight crept in, carrying a burden of incoherent recollection. He sat up. His limbs hurt him. He had the sensation of being incased in heavy armor that hindered every movement. But his mind was clear enough. It was still the red dining room, but the lights had gone out, and with them had gone the brilliancy of the night scene. A dull, flat grayness lingered. over the empty table, and the early-morning air that drifted in through the open window seemed tinged with a stale, nauseating perfume. Corodo stood with his shoulders against the casement, his arms folded, his gaze fixed on the sea. He was still in evening dress, and in the half light his face looked ashy with fatigue and suffering. As Villiers moved, he turned his head.
“Well?” he said. “Are you better now?”
“Have I been ill?”
“You have been unconscious. No, don't get up. There is time enough. You can do nothing, at this hour. It will be better to recover yourself slowly. There's some brandy at your elbow.”
Villiers put his hand vaguely to his forehead.
“I don't understand,” he muttered. “I have never fainted in my life. When was it? Hours ago, and I haven't the faintest recollection” He looked up into his host's face with a sudden concentration. “What happened?” he demanded.
For a moment the elder man did not answer. He studied Villiers intently, probingly. Then he made a quick movement, as if dismissing every subterfuge.
“You were drugged, Mr. Villiers.”
“Drugged! By whom?”
“By me.”
“For what purpose?”
“That I will explain. Sit down. No harm will come to you. I drugged you, Mr. Villiers, because I wished you to be here this morning, and I could not have kept you by any other means. It was a case of needs must. But now I will not keep you long. I will be very frank with you. I told you that I believed in you and in your future, and I am prepared to back my belief. I promise you that in a few months' time you and I will be rich men. That is my side of the bargain.”
“And mine?”
“You will give your invention into my hands.”
“For what purpose?”
“For sale.”
“And to whom?”
“To the German government.”
Villiers leaped to his feet. The weakness had dropped from him like an encumbering cloak, and he stood erect, conscious of nothing in that first movement but a savage contempt.
“You must be mad, Mr. Corodo! Whoever has maneuvered this scheme counted without me. I am an English officer”
“You are not that any more.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will be able to answer your own question if I ask you another. What is the fate of a man who deserts his ship in the face of the enemy?”
“He is shot—at best drummed out”
“You have spoken your own sentence, Mr. Villiers.”
Villiers laughed almost gayly.
“You are certainly mad, Mr. Corodo. Have I deserted my ship?”
“It would seem so.” He pushed a slip of paper across the table. “That may enlighten you. You see, it is from your war office—instant recall. It came on the night of my little dinner. I intercepted it, and returned a message to your hotel, saying you would catch up with that night's train at Paris. I was even thoughtful enough to add instructions for your wife. Mr. Villiers, that was two nights ago. And last night war was declared.”
A cry of half-incredulous fury burst from Fenton's lips. Corodo went on quietly, almost regretfully:
“I am sorry to have hurt you. I have my profession, as you have yours. In another form I have suffered your fate. You are in the position I described to you last night—that of a man discarded by his own country. To your own people you are dead—as I am. But there is another life open to us both. Accept it—make the best of it” He threw up his hands in an instinctive movement of self-defense. “Stand back, Mr. Villiers. It is useless—too late. The ports are closed—there is no turning back”
He barred the way, half threatening, half persuasive. Villiers sprang at him. In that moment he was scarcely human, A savage beast of the forests, trapped and goaded into madness, could not have flung itself upon its pursuers with a more reckless fury. In Villiers' ears sounded the call to arms that had come too late, the appeal of his country, wrestling in a death grip with her enemy. And he had failed—had been shut out forever from his heritage.
It was over in a minute, and he struggled to his feet. But Corodo did not move. He lay quite still, with his face turned to the rising sun. There was no trace of injury on him, but for all that, he did not move or speak. His eyes, wide open, were fixed in a blank, unflinching stare. Villiers shrank back. Yet above his instinctive dread of this still figure there rose a stronger instinct. He must get back at all costs before it was too late.
Footsteps sounded overhead and came on swiftly. He heard them on the stairs, and in an instant he had reached the door and turned the key. There remained the window—open—and a mad drop of twenty feet. But beyond that lay the cliffs and the sea, and a last chance of freedom and atonement.