The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

far as other things are concerned, I am exiled now. I am working out my expiation.”

She leaned back in her seat with an air of exhaustion. Her eyes closed. Then the car drove in through some iron gates and stopped in front of her door, which was immediately opened. A footman hurried out. She turned to Dominey.

“You will not enter,” she pleaded, “for a short time?”

“If you will permit me to pay you a visit, it will give me great pleasure,” he answered formally. “I will call, if I may, on my return from Norfolk.”

She gave him her hand with a sad smile.

“Let my people take you wherever you want to go,” she invited, “and remember,” she added, dropping her voice, “I do not admit defeat. This is not the last word between us.”

She disappeared in some state, escorted through the great front door of one of London’s few palaces by an attractive majordomo and footman in the livery of her House. Dominey drove back to the Carlton, where in the lounge he found the band playing, crowds still sitting around, amongst whom Seaman was conspicuous, in his neat dinner clothes and with his cherubic air of inviting attention from prospective new acquaintances. He greeted Dominey enthusiastically.

“Come,” he exclaimed, “I am weary of solitude! I have seen scarcely a face that I recognise. My tongue is parched with inaction. I like to talk, and there has been no one to talk to. I might as well have opened up my little house in Forest Hill.”

“I’ll talk to you if you like,” Dominey promised a little grimly, glancing at the clock and hastily ordering a whisky and soda. “I will begin by telling you this,” he added, lowering his tone. “I have discovered the greatest danger I shall have to face during my enterprise.”

“What is that?”

“A woman⁠—the Princess Eiderstrom.”

Seaman lit one of his inevitable cigars and threw one of his short, fat legs over the other. He gazed for a moment with an air of satisfaction at his small foot, neatly encased in court shoes.

“You surprise me,” he confessed. “I have considered the matter. I cannot see any great difficulty.”

“Then you must be closing your eyes to it willfully,” Dominey retorted, “or else you are wholly ignorant of the Princess’s temperament and disposition.”

“I believe I appreciate both,” Seaman replied, “but I still do not see any peculiar difficulty in the situation. As an English nobleman you have a perfect right to enjoy the friendship of the Princess Eiderstrom.”

“And I thought you were a man of sentiment!” Dominey scoffed. “I thought you understood a little of human nature. Stephanie Eiderstrom is Hungarian born and bred. Even race has never taught her self-restraint. You don’t seriously suppose that after all these years, after all she has suffered⁠—and she has suffered⁠—she is going to be content with an emasculated form of friendship? I talk to you without reserve, Seaman. She has made it very plain tonight that she is going to be content with nothing of the sort.”

“What takes place between you in private,” Seaman began⁠—

“Rubbish!” his companion interrupted. “The Princess is an impulsive, a passionate, a distinctly primitive woman, with a good deal of the wild animal in her still. Plots or political necessities are not likely to count a snap of the fingers with her.”

“But surely,” Seaman protested, “she must understand that your country has claimed you for a great work?”

Dominey shook his head.

“She is not a German,” he pointed out. “On the contrary, like a great many other Hungarians, I think she rather dislikes Germany and Germans. Her only concern is the personal question between us. She considers that every moment of the rest of my life should be devoted to her.”

“Perhaps it is as well,” Seaman remarked, “that you have arranged to go down tomorrow to Dominey. I will think out a scheme. Something must be done to pacify her.”

The lights were being put out. The two men rose a little unwillingly. Dominey felt singularly indisposed for sleep, but anxious at the same time to get rid of his companion. They strolled into the darkened hall of the hotel together.

“I will deal with the matter for you as well as I can,” Seaman promised. “To my mind, your greatest difficulty will be encountered tomorrow. You know what you have to deal with down at Dominey.”

Dominey’s face was very set and grave.

“I am prepared,” he said.

Seaman still hesitated.

“Do you remember,” he asked, “that when we talked over your plans at Cape Town, you showed me a picture of⁠—of Lady Dominey?”

“I remember.”

“May I have one more look at it?”

Dominey, with fingers that trembled a little, drew from the breast pocket of his coat a leather case, and from that a worn picture. The two men looked at it side by side beneath one of the electric standards which had been left burning. The face was the face of a girl, almost a child, and the great eyes seemed filled with a queer, appealing light. There was something of the same suggestion to be found in the lips, a certain helplessness, an appeal for love and protection to some stronger being.

Seaman turned away with a little grunt, and commented:

“Permitting myself to reassume for a moment or two the ordinary sentiments of an ordinary human being, I would sooner have a dozen of your Princesses to deal with than the original of that picture.”

VIII

“Your ancestral home,” Mr. Mangan observed, as the car turned the first bend in the grass-grown avenue and Dominey Hall came into sight. “Damned fine house, too!”

His companion made no reply. A storm had come up during the last few minutes, and, as though he felt the cold, he had dragged his hat over his eyes and turned his coat collar up to his ears. The house, with its great double front, was now clearly visible⁠—the timeworn, Elizabethan, red brick outline that faced the park southwards, and the stone-supported, grim and weather-stained back which confronted the