The Everlasting Arms Part 33

"Then you can go; you know my instructions. Remember, they must be obeyed to the very letter."

"They shall be--to the very letter."

The Count entered another room, and opened a safe. From it he took some papers, and read carefully. Then he sat thinking for a long time. Presently he looked at his watch.

Daylight had now gone, early as it was, for winter still gripped the land. Some days there were suggestions of spring in the air, but they were very few. The night was cold.

The Count went to the window, and looked out over St. James's Park. Great, black ominous-looking clouds rolled across the sky, but here and there were patches of blue where stars could plainly be seen. He had evidently made up his mind about something.

His servant knocked at the door.

"What time will your lordship dine?"

"I shall not dine."

"Very good, my lord."

Count Romanoff pa.s.sed into the street. For some time he walked, and then, hailing a taxi-cab, drove to London Bridge. He did not drive across the bridge, but stopped at the Cannon Street end. Having paid the driver, he walked slowly towards the southern bank of the river. Once he stood for more than a minute watching while the dark waters rolled towards the sea.

"What secrets the old river could tell if it could speak," he muttered; "but all dark secrets--all dark."

He found his way to the station, and mingled with the crowd there.

Hours later he was nearly twenty miles from London, and he was alone on a wide heath. Here and there dotted around the outskirts of the heath he saw lights twinkling.

The sky was brighter here; the clouds did not hang so heavily as in the city, while between them he occasionally saw the pale crescent of a waxing moon. All around him was the heath.

He paid no heed to the biting cold, but walked rapidly along one of the straight-cut roads through the heather and bushes. It was now getting late, and no one was to be seen. There were only a few houses in the district, and the inhabitants of these were doubtless ensconced before cosy fires or playing games with their families. It was not a night to be out.

"What a mockery, what a miserable, dirty little mockery life is!" he said aloud as he tramped along. "And what pigmies men are; what paltry, useless things make up their lives! This is Walton Heath, and here I suppose the legislators of the British Empire come to find their amus.e.m.e.nt in knocking a golf-ball around. And men are applauded because they can knock that ball a little straighter and a little farther than someone else. But--but--and there comes the rub--these same men can think--think right and wrong, do right and wrong. That fellow Faversham--yes; what is it that makes him beat me?"

Mile after mile he tramped, sometimes stopping to look at the sullen, angry-looking clouds that swept across the sky, and again looking around the heath as if trying to locate some object in which he was interested.

Presently he reached a spot where the road cut through some woodland. Dark pine trees waved their branches to the skies. In the near distance the heath stretched away for miles, and although it was piercingly cold, the scene was almost attractive. But here it was dark, gloomy, forbidding. For some time he stood looking at the waving pine trees; it might have been that he saw more than was plainly visible.

"What fools, what blind fools men are!" he said aloud. "Their lives are bounded by what they see, and they laugh at the spiritual world; they scorn the suggestion that belting the earth are untold millions of spirits of the dead. Here they are all around me. I can see them. I can see them!"

His eyes burnt red; his features were contorted as if by pain.

"An eternal struggle," he cried--"just an eternal struggle between right and wrong, good and evil--yes, good and evil!

"And the good is slowly gaining the victory! Out of all the wild, mad convulsions of the world, right is slowly emerging triumphant, the savage is being subdued, and the human, the Divine, is triumphing."

He lifted his right hand, and shook his fist to the heavens as if defiantly.

"I had great hopes of the War," he went on. "I saw h.e.l.l let loose; I saw the world mad for blood. Everywhere was the l.u.s.t for blood; everywhere men cried, 'Kill! kill!' And now it is over, and wrong is being defeated--defeated!"

He seemed to be in a mad frenzy, his voice shook with rage.

"Dark spirits of h.e.l.l!" he cried. "You have been beaten, beaten! Why, even in this ghastly war, the Cross has been triumphant! Those thousands, those millions of men who went out from this land, went out for an ideal. They did not understand it, but it was so. They felt dimly and indistinctly that they were fighting, dying, that others might live! And some of the most heroic deeds ever known in the history of the world were done. Men died for others, died for comradeship, died for duty, died for country. Everywhere the Cross was seen!

"And those fellows are not dead! They are alive! they have entered into a greater life!

"Why, even the ghastly tragedy of Russia, on which we built so much, will only be the birth-pains which precede a new life!

"Everywhere, everywhere the right, the good, is emerging triumphant!"

He laughed aloud, a laugh of almost insane mockery.

"But men are blind, blind! They do not realise the world of spirits that is all around them, struggling, struggling. But through the ages the spirits of the good are prevailing!

"That is my punishment, my punishment spirits of h.e.l.l, my punishment! Day by day I see the final destruction of evil!"

His voice was hoa.r.s.e with agony. He might have been mad--mad with the torture of despair.

"All around me, all around me they live," he went on. "But I am not powerless. I can still work my will. And Faversham shall be mine. I swore it on the day he was born, swore it when his mother pa.s.sed into the world of spirits, swore it when his father joined her. What though all creation is moving upwards, I can still drag him down, down into h.e.l.l! Yes, and she shall see him going down, she shall know, and then she shall suffer as I have suffered. Her very heaven shall be made h.e.l.l to her, because she shall see her son become even what I have become!"

He left the main road, and followed a disused drive through the wood. Before long he came to a lonely house, almost hidden by the trees. A dark gloomy place it was, dilapidated and desolate. Years before it had perchance been the dwelling-place of some inoffensive respectable householder who loved the quietness of the country. For years it was for sale, and then it was bought by a stranger who never lived in it, but let it fall into decay.

Romanoff found his way to the main entrance of the house, and entered. He ascended a stairway, and at length found his way to a room which was furnished. Here he lit a curiously-shaped lamp. In half an hour the place was warm, and suggested comfort. Romanoff sat like one deep in thought.

Presently he began to pace the room, uttering strange words as he walked. He might have been repeating incantations, or weaving some mystic charms. Then he turned out the lamp, and only the fire threw a flickering light around the room.

"My vital forces seem to fail me," he muttered; "even here it seems as though there is good."

Perspiration oozed from his forehead, and his face was as pale as death.

Again he uttered wild cries; he might have been summoning unseen powers to his aid.

"They are here!" he shouted, and there was an evil joy in his face. Then there was a change, fear came into his eyes. Looking across the room, he saw two streaks of light in the form of a cross, while out of the silence a voice came.

"Cease!" said the Voice.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL.

Romanoff ceased speaking, and his eyes were fixed on the two streaks of light.

"Who are you? What do you want?" he asked.

"I am here to bid you desist."

"And who are you?"

Slowly, between him and the light, a shadowy figure emerged. Second after second its shape became more clearly outlined, until the form of a woman appeared. But the face was obscure; it was dim and shadowy.

Romanoff's eyes were fixed on the figure; but he uttered no sound. His tongue was dry, and cleaved to the roof of his mouth. His lips were parched.

The face became plainer. Its lineaments were more clearly outlined. He could see waves of light brown hair, eyes that were large and yearning with a great tenderness and pity, yet lit up with joy and holy resolve. A mouth tender as that of a child, but with all the firmness of mature years. A haunting face it was, haunting because of its spiritual beauty, its tenderness, its ineffable joy; and yet it was stern and strong.

It was the face of the woman whom d.i.c.k Faversham had seen in the smoke-room of the outward-bound vessel years before, the face that had appeared to him at the doorway of the great house at Wendover.

"You, you!" cried Romanoff at length. "You! Madaline?"

"Yes!"

"Why are you here?"

"To plead with you, to beseech you to let my son alone."

A change came over Romanoff's face as he heard the words. A new strength seemed to have come to him. Confidence shone in his eyes, his every feature spoke of triumph.

"Your son! His son!" he cried harshly. "The son of the man for whom you cast me into the outer darkness. But for him you might have been the mother of my son, and I--I should not have been what I am."

"You are what you are because you have always yielded to the promptings of evil," replied the woman. "That was why I never loved you--never could love you."

"But you looked at me with eyes of love until he came."

"As you know, I was but a child, and when you came with your great name, your great riches, you for a time fascinated me; but I never loved you. I told you so before he came."

"But I loved you," said Romanoff hoa.r.s.ely. "You, the simple country girl, fascinated me, the Russian n.o.ble. And I would have withheld nothing from you. Houses, lands, position, a great name, all--all were yours if you would have been my wife. But you rejected me."

"I did not love you. I felt you were evil. I told you so."

"What of that? I loved you. I swore I would win you. But you--you--a simple country girl, poor, ignorant of the world's ways, resisted me, me--Romanoff. And you married that insipid scholar fellow, leaving me scorned, rejected. And I swore I would be revenged, living or dead. Then your child was born and you died. I could not harm you, you were beyond me, but your son lived. And I swore again. If I could not harm you, I could harm him, I could destroy him. I gave myself over to evil for that. I, too, have pa.s.sed through the doorway which the world calls death; but powers have been given me, powers to carry out my oath. While his father was alive, I could do nothing, but since then my work has been going forward. And I shall conquer, I shall triumph."

"And I have come here to-night to plead with you on my son's behalf. He has resisted wrong for a long time. Leave him in peace."

"Never," cried Romanoff. "You pa.s.sed into heaven, but your heaven shall be h.e.l.l, for your son shall go there. He shall become even as I am. His joy shall be in evil."

"Have you no pity, no mercy?"

"None," replied Romanoff. "Neither pity nor mercy have a place in me. You drove me to h.e.l.l, and it is my punishment that the only joy which may be mine is the joy of what you call evil."

"Then have pity, have mercy on yourself."

"Pity on myself? Mercy on myself? You talk in black ignorance."

"No, I speak in light. Every evil you do only sinks you deeper in mire, deeper in h.e.l.l."

"I cannot help that. It is my doom."

"It is not your doom if you repent. If you turn your face, your spirit to the light."

"I cannot repent. I am of those who love evil. I hate mercy. I despise pity."

"Then I must seek to save him in spite of you."

"You cannot," and a laugh of savage triumph accompanied his words. "I have made my plans. Nothing which you can do will save him. He has been given to me."

For a few seconds there was tense unnatural silence. The room was full of strange influences, as though conflicting forces were in opposition, as though light and darkness, good and evil, were struggling together.

"No, no, Madaline," went on Romanoff. "Now is my hour of triumph. The son you love shall be mine."

"Love is stronger than hate, good is stronger than evil," she replied. "You are fighting against the Eternal Spirit of Good; you are fighting against the Supreme Manifestation of that Goodness, which was seen two thousand years ago on the Cross of Calvary."

"The Cross of Calvary!" replied Romanoff, and his voice was hoa.r.s.e; "it is the symbol of defeat, of degradation, of despair. For two thousand years it has been uplifted, but always to fail."

"Always to conquer," was the calm reply. "Slowly but surely, age after age, it has been subduing kingdoms, working righteousness, lifting man up to the Eternal Goodness. It has through all the ages been overcoming evil with good, and bringing the harmonies of holiness out of the discord of sin."

"Think of this war!" snarled Romanoff. "Think of Germany, think of Russia! What is the world but a mad h.e.l.l?"

"Out of it all will Goodness shine. I cannot understand all, for full understanding only belongs to the Supreme Father of Lights. But I am sure of the end. Already the morning is breaking, already light is shining out of the darkness. Men's eyes are being opened, they are seeing visions and dreaming dreams. They are seeing the end of war, and talking of Leagues of Nations, of the Brotherhood of the world."

"But that does not do away with the millions who have died in battle. It does not atone for blighted and ruined homes, and the darkness of the world."

"Not one of those who fell in battle is dead. They are all alive. I have seen them, spoken to them. And the Eternal Goodness is ever with them, ever bearing them up. They have done what they knew to be their duty, and they have entered into their reward."

"What, the Evil and the Good together?" sneered Romanoff. "That were strange justice surely."

"Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do Right? They are all in His care, and His pity and His love are Infinite. That is why I plead with you."

"What, to spare your son? If what you say is true I am powerless. But I am not. Wrong is stronger than right. I defy you."

"Then is it to be a fight between us?"

"If you will. He must be mine."

"And what then?" There was ineffable sorrow in the woman's voice. "Would you drag him into aeons of pain and anguish to satisfy your revenge?"

"I would, and I will. What if right is stronger than wrong, as you say? What if in the end right shall drag him through h.e.l.l to heaven? I shall still know that he has lived in h.e.l.l, and thus shall I have my revenge."

"And I, who am his mother, am also his ministering angel, and it is my work to save him from you."

"And you are powerless--powerless, I tell you?"

"All power is not given to us, but G.o.d has given His angels power to help and save."

"If you have such power, why am I not vanquished?"