Chapter XVII: Missing

“Well, Phil, what do you think of your sister-in-law? Isn’t she an amusing child?”

“She is amusing, but she’s not a child--or at any rate, she’s a woman as well.”

“No, Phil, I swear to you I feel like a showman, or old Barlow in ‘Sandford and Merton,’ or a benevolent uncle taking a small kid to the Zoo--like anything but a husband. Now, do we look like a married couple?”

“Not a bit. How funny! It was only this morning that it struck me you looked like a kind elder brother taking his little sister out on a half-holiday. Helene was hanging on your arm and looking up into your face, and chattering hard the whole time.”

“Of course. She’s nothing but a child. She has been nowhere, seen nothing, heard nothing, and her mother has done all she could to keep her a baby. Everything is new and interesting to her, and life is a nice new game. I keep thinking of that absurd story of the wife of some literary man who chose a house because ‘the garden would be so lovely for her and Percy to play in.’ I’m certain Helene would be attracted by a good lot of bushes. She’d think they would be so convenient for hide-and-seek.”

“I’m glad the more obvious literary parallel hasn’t occurred to you,” said Philippa severely.

“More obvious even than that? Oh, I know! David Cop----”

“If you say it, I shall throw this book at you. She is a dear little thing, Usk, and you don’t appreciate her a bit.”

“I know she’s a dear little thing, and I’m awfully fond of her. And no doubt it’s most excellent for her to be firmly convinced that I know everything. Plenty of men would give their ears for their wives to think so. But it’s horribly embarrassing for me when she looks up at me just like a child and asks some perfectly impossible question.”

“No, not like a child. A child is never satisfied if you can’t answer it. ‘Don’t you know? Why don’t you know? Does anybody know? Then _why_ don’t you know?’ You used to go on like that yourself; I can remember it quite well. But when Helene finds she has asked a question you can’t answer, she’s dreadfully afflicted, and looks round to make sure that Fred and I haven’t noticed.”

“Poor little girl! But really, Phil, we get on perfectly well, and she’s continually assuring me that she was never so happy in her life.”

“Yes; but I am in constant terror that her eyes will be opened. I always try to draw her in when you and I are talking. Don’t you see how it is? You consult me about what you are going to do, but you tell her about it when it’s all settled. And she has a right to be consulted.”

“Oh, nonsense! I don’t want her to worry herself. She’s a dear little comrade as it is, and I believe I’d rather she remained a child, after all. She--she’s so awfully contented and satisfied now, you know.”

Philippa nodded her head sagely. “That’s just it. You think that as a woman she would demand more from you. But she is a woman in the way she loves you, Usk. I can see that.”

“My dear Phil, you are most penetrating and far-sighted, I don’t doubt, but after all, I’m Helene’s husband, and I may be allowed to know her better than you do. Look at her now, tormenting old Fred with a catechism on vine-growing. She’s only a child, vividly interested in everything, and devoted to me just because I’ve been kind to her--as if I could help it. I suppose she’ll grow up some day, but I’m not going to turn her into a little old woman before the time.”

Philippa rose and looked over the carved wooden railing that safeguarded the balcony, for the house stood on a precipitous hillside. Up the winding path her husband and Helene were slowly climbing, with a pleasant murmur of voices, after visiting the vineyard which occupied a more gradual slope below. Far in the distance could be seen the blue of the Mediterranean, with a wilderness of hills between, some bare and rugged, others cultivated almost to the summit. The native house in which the Mansfields had taken refuge from the heat and possible fever of the Palestinian lowlands where their work lay was situated on the western slope of Mount Lebanon.

“They won’t be here for a minute,” said Philippa hastily. “Usk, tell me quickly--I’m most frightfully anxious--is it because you are still in love with Félicia that you can’t care properly for Helene?”

Usk laughed. “You’ve quite determined that I’m a brute to Helene. No, Phil, I can’t say that I feel the very slightest envy of King Michael. If Félicia was cruel, she was kind too. As I was not to love her, she left me nothing to do but hate her. No, I don’t mean that exactly. You know, don’t you?”

“And now she has probably had her wish, and been a queen, for two days. It doesn’t seem at all fair or moral. Even Becky Sharp never quite succeeded in getting what she wanted. But she’s out of your way, and I’m glad of it. Poor little Helene must ‘dree her ain weird,’ I suppose, as you won’t listen to what I say about her.”

“A telegram!” cried Helene, running up the steps at the end of the balcony. “We met the servant coming from Beyrout with the letters, and he had this for you, Usk. What can it be?”

“What can it be?” echoed Usk, as he tore open the envelope. “I say!” his tone changed. “Just listen: ‘Your uncle has disappeared. Meet me immediately at Novigrad, _viâ_ Trieste.--Ernestine.’ What does it mean?”

“Uncle Cyril disappeared!” gasped Philippa.

“They’ve murdered him at last!” cried Mansfield. “Don’t stand staring, Usk; they shall pay for it! We’ll track them to the world’s end.”

“It doesn’t say he’s dead,” suggested Helene, very pale. “Perhaps it’s brigands, and they are holding him to ransom.”

“Well, at any rate, we must find him,” said Mansfield. “If we go down to Beyrout to-night, we can catch the steamer to-morrow morning, Usk.”

“No, no,” said Usk, recovering himself. “You must stay here. We can’t leave the girls alone. Besides, there’s your work.”

“Hang the work!” cried Mansfield. “The girls will look after one another.”

“No,” said Helene, very quietly, but with white determination, “I am going with Usk.”

“Nonsense, Lenchen! I can’t take you. You’ll stay with Phil and the baby.”

“I am going with you,” repeated Helene. “Or if you refuse to let me come with you, I shall follow you by the next steamer, and Phil will help me, because she knows I am right in going.”

“She is, indeed, Usk,” said Philippa. “With you to take care of her, what reason is there why she shouldn’t go?”

“Why, dozens! It’s simply preposterous. I shall be rushing about into all sorts of places, where I couldn’t take a lady. You don’t know how rough things are in Illyria.”

“I can live upon black bread and goats’ milk,” said Helene calmly, “and you couldn’t.”

“But I can’t trail about a whole procession of servants. Everything may depend upon following up a clue quickly.”

“Then we will leave some of them behind. I promised mamma I would never travel without Hannele and Jakob--she was afraid of my becoming English and independent, so she made me promise not to go about unattended,” explained Helene rather piteously to Philippa--“so we must take them; but with your William besides, we can manage quite well.”

“Now you know you only want William because his name is the same as the groom’s in ‘Mademoiselle Mathilde,’” said Usk unkindly.

“No,” said Helene, with dignity. “It is because it is not suitable for my husband to have no attendant while I have two.”

“And look here, Usk,” said Mansfield; “you can establish your wife and the servants comfortably at some safe centre while you go off and follow up clues. It’ll be much better for her to have some one with her.”

“That is not what I want,” objected Helene--“to be left safe and comfortable while Usk goes into danger. I want to go with him and help.”

“Oh, but you don’t want to be in the way, Lenchen,” said Philippa, speaking with the authority of a whole year of matrimonial experience. “You will do as Usk thinks best, I know, and he’ll take you with him wherever he can, won’t you, Usk?”

“Rather!” said Usk forgivingly, and Helene brushed away a threatening tear or two, and smiled up at him.

“Because, you see,” Philippa went on, “this is such an awful thing that we must none of us think about ourselves at all, only about Uncle Cyril and how to find him. We had better settle that you are to telegraph for Fred the moment you want him, Usk. I don’t think he ought to leave Palestine until you see what there is to be done, for I know the Chevalier Goldberg considers his presence here very important.”

“I hate being made a part of a plot and not seeing how it works,” said Mansfield gloomily. “If you wire I’ll come like a shot, Usk. Which is the quickest way?”

“To land in Dardania and cross the mountains, if the steamers fit. Why does Aunt Ernestine tell me to come round by Trieste, I wonder?”

“Because she has reason to distrust Dardania, probably. It’s quite possible that our friend the Dowager Princess has allies there still.”

“You are puzzling Helene,” said Usk. “She doesn’t know all the ins and outs of the family differences.”

“Oh, I know that Cousin Ottilie was very angry about Aunt Ernestine’s marriage, and said horrid things about the dear Count,” said Helene; and then the subject dropped, as Philippa suggested that it was time to pack.

Five days later Usk and Helene, with their diminished retinue, were landing at Trieste, after eagerly seizing upon the papers brought out by the boats which boarded the steamer outside the harbour. When they left Beyrout, no news had arrived concerning the disappearance of Count Mortimer beyond the Queen’s telegram, but in these European papers it was the sensation of the hour. The circumstances appeared equally simple and perplexing. The Count, with his secretary and valet, had left the Pannonian railway at its termination on the eastern border of the Illyrian Provinces, and, like other travellers, hired a carriage to convey him across the debatable land which was owned by Roum, partially occupied by Pannonia, and unceasingly coveted both by Dardania and Mœsia. The Roumi Government had refused persistently, and from its own point of view wisely, to allow any railway to be built across this strip of territory, but there was a carriage road, kept in good order by Pannonian military engineers, which connected the Pannonian railway system on the western border with that of Mœsia on the east. Quitting Novigrad in Illyria, the party had arrived safely at a posting-station bearing the uneuphonious name of Klotsch, situated near the point at which the main road into Dardania crossed, almost at right angles, that which joined the two railways. Here, while the horses were changed, the travellers alighted for dinner, only to find when the meal was over that their driver had got drunk. The landlord volunteered to provide another, but he had to be sought for in the village, and Count Mortimer, who was obviously impatient at the delay, decided to walk on with his secretary, and allow the carriage, with the valet and the luggage, to overtake him. It was a long light summer evening, and he was anxious to reach the Mœsian frontier that night. The carriage started about a quarter of an hour later, but the driver and the valet were astonished to find that they did not come up with the walkers, although the horses were fresh and the road good. In ever-increasing astonishment they drove the whole way to the customs-station on the Mœsian border without meeting any one, and learned there that Count Mortimer and his companion had not arrived. The valet became immediately very much excited, and demanded a force of gendarmes from the Pannonian frontier-post, in order to go back and make a thorough search on both sides of the road for his master, who, he declared, must have been waylaid and murdered. The officer in charge of the post received the demand with contempt and some resentment, for the road was regarded as particularly safe, but the valet’s earnestness, and his declaration that he believed his master had enemies who would stick at nothing to get him out of the way, induced him to send a patrol with torches to search the roadsides as far as Klotsch. Messengers were also sent along the road which led into the Dardanian highlands, to inquire whether the two men had taken the wrong turning and gone that way by mistake; but neither at the one country-seat which stood in the neighbourhood, nor in any of the poor hamlets along the road, had anything been seen of them. The country-house belonged to Prince Valerian Pelenko, a cousin of the Prince of Dardania, and he himself, travelling to “Europe,” had passed through Klotsch with his attendants shortly after the carriage had started. He had not met it, for it would have passed the cross-road before his carriage turned into the main highway, and most certainly he had not met the missing men, for his attendants would have been sure to report at the posting-station the astonishing sight of two “European” gentlemen walking unattended along the road. Extraordinary as it seemed, there was no doubt that Count Mortimer and his secretary had disappeared as completely as though they had not been, and that the disappearance had taken place on the high road and almost in broad daylight. There were no signs of a struggle, and tentative suggestions of a landslip, or a fall over a steep place on the edge of the road, were scouted at once, for there was absolutely not the slightest indication of either. The English papers, taking up Count Mortimer’s cause with a vigour they had seldom displayed during his career, were drawing parallels between his disappearance and that of the unfortunate Mr Benjamin Bathurst in the early years of the nineteenth century, and hinting that as similar influences were in all probability at work, the fate of the one was likely to remain, like that of the other, an unsolved mystery. The Neustrian, Scythian, and Roumi papers, relying on the known antipathy of their respective Governments to the Pannonian occupation of the Illyrian Provinces, were urgent and eloquent in their representations that Pannonia had now conclusively proved herself unfitted to discharge her duties, since she could not even protect travellers on the high road. The Pannonian papers, unable to deny the facts, took refuge in the assertion that Count Mortimer’s disappearance was purely voluntary. For reasons of his own he had made up his mind to vanish, and he had done so, and who could be held responsible for the doings of a man whose pride it had always been to baffle and astonish the rest of Europe? This was the state of things at present. Queen Ernestine, in the deepest grief and anxiety, was at Novigrad, where Lord Caerleon had joined her as fast as steam could bring him from England, and they were making a comprehensive search throughout the whole district, aided by the best detectives that money could procure.

“It looks hopeless!” said Usk despondently to Helene, as they walked up the quay at Trieste. “One almost wonders---- Now then, where are you going to?” The words were addressed to a loutish youth, apparently a dockyard loafer of the usual type, who had lurched up against him; but as the man withdrew with a surly apology, Usk found a piece of paper in his hand. Guessing that it contained some secret information, he unfolded one of the newspapers he had bought, as if to look at the page again, and laid the paper against it. “Look here, Helene!” he said.

Helene glanced quickly at the scrap of writing.

“When you leave Trieste this afternoon, watch out for me. I shall be fooling around at the depot with a camera, and I don’t want to have you seem to know me. Get into talk with me the way you would with a stranger, for I must speak to you.--Hicks.”

“This gentleman is some English peer of your acquaintance?” said Helene, looking respectfully at the signature.

Usk smothered a laugh. “Not exactly,” he said. “He’s the American newspaper man you’ve heard so much about, and a real good fellow. If you’ll excuse me, Nell, I’ll light a cigar.”

“A long way round!” said Helene, as he twisted the paper into a roll, and striking a match, set light to it, instead of lighting the cigar with the match.

“If you mean a roundabout way, my child, why not say so? Don’t you see that Hicks evidently expects us to be watched? I daren’t leave that paper lying about, or even tear it up. Now will you keep your eyes open this afternoon, and express innocent wonder if you see a long scraggy fellow, with a thin grey beard, taking snap-shots? That’ll give us an opportunity to get into conversation.”

Helene promised to be on the watch, and very soon after they reached the station she pulled Usk’s sleeve. “Do look at that gentleman taking photographs,” she said, with admirable innocence. “It must be so interesting to be able to do it! All these quaint costumes----”

“They’re nothing to what you’ll see in the Balkans,” said Usk. “What a pity we didn’t think of bringing a kodak. But we might send for one, of course. Would you mind allowing my wife to see how your camera works?” he asked of the photographer, who had been listening with a twinkle in his eye while pretending to focus an Albanian group on the opposite platform.

“Why, certainly,” was the hearty response. “You hold it this way, and you put your eye here---- But if we move away a step or so, we won’t be so crowded. I have a whole-souled admiration for your manner of meeting me, sir,” added Mr Hicks, in a lower tone, as he exhibited the camera and appeared to be describing its mechanism. “And this is the little Princess?”

“No,” said Helene. “It is Lady Usk.”

“Is that so?” asked Mr Hicks slowly, manipulating a screw. “Well, I incline to think Lord Usk has struck ile.”

“I don’t know English quite well yet,” said Helene apologetically.

“I guess your husband has found the pay-streak, then.”

“I’m afraid there must be a great many words I don’t know. I must look them out.”

“Mr Hicks wants me to understand that I’ve married a treasure, Lenchen. Does that satisfy you? Well, Hicks, what’s the plan of campaign?”

“Why, just this, sir. There are the Queen and your father turning the Illyrian Provinces upside down, and a whole army of detectives figuring around. But those that took on this big risk mean to see it through, and they will pour out the dollars like water to keep truth at the bottom of her well. They know just who’s on their trail, and they have covered their tracks. I have concluded to work back of them, instead of in front, which is high-toned, but renders a man more liable to sudden death than appeals to me. I am working up the Illyrian Provinces with typewriter and camera, _sabe_? on behalf of a monster tourist agency in the States that’s set on exploiting them, and you may bet your last red cent my eyes will be open for any suspicious circumstances. I’d like to fix up a code for communicating with you----”

“Oh, please,” said Helene, “pardon my interrupting you, but I have just seen my cousin, the Princess of Dardania, getting out of the train at the end of the platform, and I thought from what Usk said----”

With great dexterity Mr Hicks withdrew himself behind a pile of luggage. “You’re real smart, Lady Usk. If her Royal Highness had seen us together, it would have been just about the meanest trick fate could have played us. Coming off the cars from Illyria, was she? Now what’s she been doing way down there? She was at Nice yet when we quit it before the wedding. You don’t think she saw us, do you?”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t, but she is coming this way.”

“Helene, you’ll have to face her,” said Usk. “I must arrange things with Hicks. If I establish you on this seat, with a bodyguard of servants in the background, while I go and see about the luggage, you won’t move away till I come back, will you? and you’ll try to keep her in talk?”

“But there is no need to see about the luggage,” Helene called after him, as he hurried away; “the railway officials look after that, or you can send one of the servants.” But he was already out of earshot, and Helene rose to meet the Princess, who swept towards her with outstretched hands, making her feel incredibly young and small.

“Why, my little Lenchen!” cried Princess Ottilie; “do I find you alone? What has happened to the Fairy Prince--fairy peer I should say, should I not?”

“Usk is gone to look after the luggage,” said Helene.

“The ruling passion of the Englishman on his travels! And are you tired of one another yet, my romantic Lenchen?”

“I am certainly not tired of him, Cousin Ottilie.”

“What freezing coldness, little one! But I forgot that you had married into a romantic family. The Mortimers and their wives are always absurdly attached to one another. It is quite _bürgerlich_--middle-class, I suppose your new relations would call it.”

“If it is middle-class to be fond of one’s husband, then I am middle-class,” said Helene.

“You--the descendant of Charlemagne! And you are allowing your husband to drag you into exile already? Where are you going with this wonderful luggage which needs so much looking after?”

“Can you ask, Cousin Ottilie? Of course we are going to Novigrad, to help look for the dear Count.”

“To help look for----? Oh, Count Mortimer!” the Princess broke into a soft peal of laughter. “My darling Lenchen, you must forgive me. It really did not occur to me whom you meant. Has it never struck any of you that Count Mortimer might prefer not to be looked for?”

“How could it? What can you mean?”

The Princess drew a letter from her pocket. “Of course Lord Usk won’t believe me,” she said, “but I should really like to save you two from taking a journey into the wilds for no reason at all.”

“Cousin Ottilie! why shouldn’t Usk believe you?” cried Helene, aghast.

“My dear child, he is prejudiced, of course,” but the Princess seemed a little confused, and unfolded the letter quickly, as though to forestall further questioning. “This is from my husband’s cousin, Valerian Pelenko. I have just been paying a flying visit to Dardania--to see the new baby, not to stay; Emilia and I agree better apart--and I wrote to ask whether I might spend a night at his house near Klotsch on the journey. Here is what he says: ‘Pray consider my house as your own, as often and as long as you like. I am sorry to be away. By the bye, I had a curious _rencontre_ just as I was leaving home. Do you remember the man Mortimer, who made rather a laughing-stock of himself at Ludwigsbad two or three years ago by aspiring to your particular favour? Naturally you will remember him; he found your cousin Ernestine of Thracia less hard-hearted than yourself, I recollect. Well, as I was driving towards Klotsch, before we turned into the Novigrad road, we met another carriage, and in it I saw Count Mortimer and a lady, with whom he seemed to be on excellent terms----’”

“Oh, it must be a mistake!” cried Helene. “Why, Aunt Ernestine was at Molzau, at Michael’s wedding.”

“My dear Lenchen, let me entreat you not to make that remark to your husband when you tell him this, or he will set you down for ever as a fool. Valerian goes on: ‘There were servants and luggage, and all the necessaries for a long journey, apparently. Doubtless your friend was bound, by way of Dardania, for the Ionian Isles, or some similar region of delight, where a spot or two may yet be found destitute of the moral code, as I once heard an Englishman say of the East generally. Happy he! What are your plans for the autumn? I am too late for Ludwigsbad this year, alas!’ That is all that concerns the Count,” said the Princess, folding the letter, as Helene sat dumb. “And here is your husband, come to sweep you into the train with the rest of the luggage, I suppose. How do you do, Lord Usk? So delightful to get this short glimpse of little Lenchen! She really looks younger than ever since you married her.”

Helene was still speechless as the Princess bade her an affectionate farewell, and gave her hand to Usk that he might lead her to her carriage. When he returned to warn Helene that their train was coming in, she turned an ashy face to him.

“Oh, Nym, I must tell you. She says such things----”

“Wait until we’re in the train,” said Usk; and it was only when they were moving out of the station that he turned to her with, “Well, what is it, Nell?”

“She says that the dear Count went away of his own accord, with--with a lady, and that he doesn’t want to be found.”

“Not content with kidnapping him, they try to take away his character, do they?” said Usk savagely. “She wants to hurt Aunt Ernestine, do you see, Nell? We won’t tell her if we can help it. Of course you don’t believe the story?”

“Of course not. But it is so dreadful that people should say such things about him, when we know how good he is, how----” Helene’s voice failed.

“Well, we know that no one will believe it who knows anything of him. She must have thought you very young, and ready to believe anything, mustn’t she? Poor little Nell!” He put his arm round her, and drew her close to him, regardless of the fact that the guard might appear at any moment.

“But how terrible that she should say such things, when she knows they are not true! Our own cousin, Nym!”

“Oh, well, you see, she has a grudge against him.”

“But why? What has he done?”

“Well, she wishes it to be understood that he proposed to her at Ludwigsbad a year or two back, and she refused him. That sort of thing generally makes a woman pursue a man with implacable hatred, doesn’t it? What do you say?”

“Why, I should have thought just the opposite--that she would be as kind to him as possible, and fearfully sorry that he should love her in vain.”

“So should I. And we think, all of us--mind, he has never said a word on the subject--that she--well, that it was the other way about.”

“That she proposed to him, and he refused her? Oh, Nym!”

“And he married Aunt Ernestine. That’s where the sting comes in, you see. Why, what’s the matter, Nell?” for Helene was crying.

“I never thought people could be so wicked,” she murmured at last.

“Ah, you’ll find worse things done than that,” said Usk sagely. “Now do you see why Hicks thinks the Princess is mixed up in whatever has happened?”

“But what could she have done?”

“He’s quite certain there has been foul play, and he thinks the most likely thing is that they have hired a band of brigands to carry him off into the hills. You see, the district is a sort of No Man’s Land, and the brigands may have come from any part of the Balkans. They may even have taken him down into the Roumi territory to the south, where an army couldn’t find him. But Hicks doesn’t believe it’s as bad as that,” quickly. “He thinks it’s much more likely they have got him somewhere in the Dardanian mountains.”

“And does he hope to find him?”

“He’s going to try. By the bye, he is to get a camera for us, and send us hints on photography from time to time, and we have arranged a code with the technical words. So cheer up, Nell. We’ll outwit them yet.”