Chapter Nine
It was four o'clock in the morning. A bitter wind had risen and was wailing around the Golden Swan, interspersed with heavy storms of hail which rattled on roof and windows. Outside the tempest shrieked and was accompanied by a vast, humming, harp-like noise as it flung itself against the lattice-work of the towers and vibrated over Richmond like a chorus of giant Æolian harps.
Arthur and I sat in the shabby sitting room, which had been the witness of so much emotion that night, and stared at each other with troubled faces.
There was a little pattering noise, and Bill Rolston came in, closing the door carefully behind him.
"He wants you to go up to him, Sir Thomas. You told me to use my own discretion. Since we carried him up and I gave him the bromides, I haven't left his bedside. I talked to him in his own language, but he wouldn't say a word until I threw off every disguise and told him who I really was and who you were also."
"But, Rolston, you may have spoiled everything!"
He shook his head. "You don't know what I know. Now that he's aware you are of his own rank, and that I am your lieutenant, his life is absolutely your forfeit. If you were to tell him to commit suicide he would do it at once as the most natural thing in the world, to preserve his honour. He is your man from this moment, Sir Thomas, just as I am."
"Then I'll go up. Arthur, you don't mind?"
"Mind? I thought I brought a bombshell into your house tonight, and so I have too, but to find all this going on simply robs me of speech. Meanwhile, if you will introduce me to this Chinese gentleman who speaks such excellent English, and whom, from repute I guess to be Mr. William Rolston, I daresay we can amuse ourselves during the remainder of this astonishing night. And," he continued, "if there is such a thing as a ham on the premises, some thick slices grilled on this excellent fire, and some cool ale in a pewter...."
I left them to it and went upstairs to my chamber. It was lit with two candles in silver holders -- I had made the place quite habitable by now -- and lying on my bed, covered with an eiderdown, his eyes feverish, his face flushed, lay the Mandarin.
His eyes opened and he smiled. It was the first time I had seen the delicate, melancholy lips light up in a real smile.
"What's that for?" I said, as I sat down by the bedside.
"You are so big, and strong, Prince," he replied, "and large and confident; and your disguise fell from you as you came in and I saw you as you were."
I knelt beside the bed and my breath came thick and fast. "Don't play with me," I said. "Not that you are doing that. You have met Her -- Miss Morse I mean, my Juanita?"
"Prince, she has deigned to give me her confidence in some degree. I do my work in the wonderful library that Mr. Morse has built. It's a great hall, full of the rarest volumes; and there are long windows from which one can look down on London and gaze beyond the City to where the wrinkled sea beats around the coast. And, day by day, in her loneliness, the Fairest of Maidens has come to this high place and taken a book of poems, sat in the window, and stared down at the world below."
He raised a thin hand and held it upright. It was so transparent that the light of a candle behind turned it to blood red.
"Let my presumptuous desires be forever silent," he chanted. "'East is east and west is west,' and I erred gravely. But, worship is worship, and worship is sacrifice."
I could hardly speak, my voice was hoarse, his words had given me such a picture of Juanita up there in the clouds.
"Prince----"
"I am not a Prince, I only have a very ordinary title. If you know England, you understand what a baronet is."
"I know England. Prince, your Princess is waiting for you and sighing out her heart that you have not come to her."
I leapt to my feet and swore a great oath that made the attic room ring. "You mean that?" I shouted.
"Prince, the Lily of all the lilies, the Rose of all the roses, alone, distraught, another Ophelia -- no, say rather Juliet with her nurse -- has honoured me with the story of her love. She never told me whom she longed for, but I knew that it was someone down in the world."
I staggered out a question.
"It is my humble adoration for her which has sharpened all my wits," he answered. "It seemed an accident -- though the gods designed it without doubt -- that made you save my life tonight, but now I know you are the lover of the Lily. And I am the servant, the happy messenger of you both."
"You can take a letter from me to her?"
"Indeed, yes."
"My friend, tell me, tell me all about her. Is she happy? No, I know she cannot be that, but----"
He lifted himself up in the bed, and there was something priest-like in his attitude as he folded his thin hands on his breast and spoke.
"Two thousand feet above London there is a Palace of all delights. Immeasurable wealth and the genius of great artists have been combined to make a City of Enchantment. And in every garden with its splashing fountains, in its halls of pictures and delights, on its aerial towers, down its gilded galleries, lurking at the banquet, mingling with the music, great shapes of terror squeak and gibber like the ghosts Shakespeare speaks of in ancient Rome."
"Morse?"
"There is a noble intellect overdone and dissolved in terror. In all other respects sane as you or I, Gideon Morse is a maniac whose one sole idea is to preserve himself and his daughter from some horror, some vengeance which surely cannot threaten him."
Twice, thrice I strode the attic.
Then at last I stopped. "Will you help me now, Pu-Yi? Will you take a letter from me? Will you help me to meet Her, and soon?"
He bowed his head for answer, and as he looked up again his face was suffused with a sort of bright eagerness that touched me to the heart. "I am yours," he said.
"Then quickly, and soon, Pu-Yi, for you are only half informed. Gideon Morse may be driven mad by fear, no doubt he is. But it is not an imaginary fear. It is a thing so sinister, so real and terrible, that I cannot tell you of it now. I am too exhausted by the events of this night. I will say only this, that within the last hour a faithful friend of mine has returned from the other side of the world and brings me ominous news."