The City in the Clouds

I caught him firmly by the arm and stared into his face – God knows what my own was like.

"I am the one who has been waiting, the one who is waiting, to help – the one who has come to save," I said, and my voice was not my own – it was as if the words were put into my mouth by an outside power.

He wrenched his arm away, gave a little cry, strode to the mantelpiece and bent his head upon his arms. His whole body was shaken with convulsive sobs.

I stood in the middle of the room watching him, hardly daring to breathe, feeling that my heart was swelling until it occupied the whole of my body.

At length he looked up.

"Then I shall be of some use to Her after all," he said. "This is too much honor. The Lily of White Jade – "

He staggered back, his face working terribly, and fell in a huddled heap upon the floor. I was just opening my mouth to call for Rolston when there came a thunderous knocking upon the side door of the house.

I ran into the dimly lit passage and as I did so Rolston flitted out of the bar door and stood beside me.

"I have heard everything," he whispered, "but what, what is this?"

He pointed to the door, and as he did so there was again the thunder of the knocker and the whirr of the electric bell.

Hardly knowing what I did I shot back the bolts at top and bottom, turned the heavy key in its lock and opened the door.

Outside in the moonlight a figure was standing, a man in a heavy fur coat, carrying a suitcase in his left hand.

"What the devil – " I was beginning, when he pushed past me and came into the hall.

Then I saw, with a leap of all my pulses, that it was Lord Arthur Winstanley.

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 theater 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 honor. 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 bomb-shell into your house to-night, 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 Asiatic 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 upon the premises, some thick slices grilled upon 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 or three 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.

"For God's sake 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 upon 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 embrasure, 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?" 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 honored me with the story of her love. She never told me whom she longed for, but I knew that it was some one 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 to-night, 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 upon his breast and spoke.

"Two thousand feet above London there is a Palace of all delights. Immeasurable wealth, the genius of great artists have been combined to make a City of Enchantment. And in every garden with its plashing fountains, in its halls of pictures and delights, upon 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, my savior and benefactor, 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.