The Masque of Love

Front matter

THE MASQUE OF LOVE A Novelette

by

I. A. R. WYLIE Author of “The Native Born,” “The Red Mirage,” Etc.

Chapter 1

I

A BELL clanged in the distance, and, coming on down the passage in a crescendo of clamorous insistence, aroused an answering buzz of voices and the unsteady clatter of feet unaccustomed to the dimensions of ship accommodation. Just outside the promenade deck at the door of cabin number eleven a young couple took despairing farewell of each other.

“After all, it's only a month, darling!”

“But if anything happened!”

“It won't. Why should it?”

They kissed. A man standing inside the deck cabin immediately behind them methodically sorted out some papers from his wallet by the light of the open window and grinned sardonically.

“Beautiful, isn't it? Touching. Ever felt like that, Monkhouse?”

The questioner, receiving no answer, glanced back over his shoulder with a half-humorous, half-sneering lift of the heavy eyebrows. “No, I don't suppose you ever did. Couldn't imagine it of you somehow, my dear fellow. But it's that which you lack to make you quite irresistible—the human touch, shall we call it?'

The man Monkhouse sneered back, and the expression, passing over his face like a gust of wind over a sullen stretch of water, left his features with their normal impassivity. He was ugly, and his ugliness was no negative, and inoffensive thing. It thrust itself upon the attention by its vigor and its open, truculent revelation of the man himself. He looked like a fighter who knew no laws, who had fought often; perhaps always, and had given and received blows that had left scars. There was gray mixed with the black hair on his temples, and the big forehead with the massive brows was marked with three furrows, drawn deep and straight as though; by the hand of an expert craftsman. But he yielded no suggestion of age. It would have been difficult to guess his years, The vigorous carriage of the square, unwieldy body, the tilt of the ugly chin, the occasional flash of the eyes which could be called no color, since they changed with every change of thought, spoke of an unsapped, inexhaustible vitality. It was part of his ugliness—as a death-dealing machine becomes more repellent as it wakes to action.

“No, I am not made on those lines, apparently,” he said. “So much the better for me. Hadn't you better be clearing? I suppose you don't mean to make the journey, too?”

The other shook his head.

“Thanks. I can't give you the pleasure. Here are all the papers. You had better be careful with them. When do you expect to let me know?”

“The House opens on the Fourth. Say on the Thirtieth?”

“That's first-rate, You don't seem to suffer from doubts or fears or any other of our mortal weaknesses.” He looked up again with his contemptuous good-humor, tinged now with a rather distrustful curiosity. “I've often wondered, you know, whether you don't get nerves sometimes—behind the backs of us all. It must be pretty nervy work one way or another. If anything came out—”

Monkhouse made a slight movement which somehow seemed to express amusement, though his face remained grave.

“My dear friend, I have chosen to live dangerously, and for the good reason that danger is all that I care about in this world. I pursue it of my own free will, and if one day it turns on me there will be a stiff tussle and I shall go down as I want to go down. To die as we wish is about the greatest blessing life offers us.”

“Thanks!” His companion smiled satirically. “A comforting philosophy. Well, I'll be off. Good voyage to you and all the luck. I'll make my adieux now. We don't want these infernal reporters nosing round. Our intimacy need not be shouted from the housetops.”

“It would not be desirable,” Monkhouse admitted in his frigid way.

He held the door open, but they did not shake hands; and though they left the cabin together, they remained silent and parted at the gangway with a curt, scarcely perceptible nod. It was high time. An impatient steward hustled the visitor down the gangway and a pallid-faced reporter, notebook in hand, had barely time to stammer: “Mr. Monkhouse, sir, if you'd just give us your ideas on the Tariff business—” before he, too, was jostled off the boat. Monkhouse leaned over the rail, watching the gesticulating journalist with a mirthless amusement that, trivial as was the cause, seemed both malicious and cruel in its deliberation. One person noticed it. She stood a little apart, apparently intent on the busy quay. Once or twice, however, she had glanced in Monkhouse's direction and seeing the unpleasant twist of the lips shivered a little. Neither the warm June morning nor the soft breeze blowing off the land were responsible for that shuddering movement of her shoulders, and thereafter she kept her head resolutely turned from him, unconscious of the fact that she, too, was under observation. Two men standing idly in the companion-way passed comments on her with the insolent condescension of their type. The man Monkhouse also attracted their attention and they compared the two jestingly.

“Beauty and the beast, eh? I wonder who she is. Actress, I should imagine. Pretty in her picture-postcard way and well-dressed. Shade too well-dressed, perhaps. Musical comedy. What's the betting?”

“Too poor to take risks like that, Haig,” the other laughed. “But the man, now—I could guess at him.”

“Don't trouble. I know. It's Monkhouse—no, not John Monkhouse, M.P., bless you—his brother, Brian—Blackguard Brian. Ugly Brian. Ugly brute, isn't he? And hated by everyone, but confoundedly clever, and has a beautiful daughter, as I know, too. Would have been something else besides a very smart financier—only—only—”

“Only what?”

There was no answer for a moment. Brian Monkhouse had turned away from the taffrail and was coming towards them, and, instinctively aware that he was the subject of their conversation, he turned his eyes in their direction, flashing a glance, which was curiously disconcerting, over their weedy dandyism. Then he passed on. The girl by the taffrail had also turned and watched him till he disappeared.

The man who had been addressed as Haig laughed.

“Not the sort of person to meet on a dark night. As I was saying, he's a might-have-been. A big scandal—a woman, of course, the mother of the girl I spoke of. It all came out on the eve of the John Monkhouse election and nearly did for him. Shame, wasn't it?”

“Beastly. Brother got in all right, though, so there were no bones broken.”

“Only this brute's—and the girl's. Now he has money enough to buy up most of us; but there are rumors—rather shady ones, too. And they wouldn't have him in Parliament, not for all his cleverness. He did for himself.”

“And looks as though he wanted to make someone pay for it,” the other laughed. “Have a brandy?”

They sauntered off to the bar, leaving the way clear for the chattering, flustered crowd of passengers who were still busy settling themselves down for their five days on the Atlantic. The girl at the taffrail resumed her steadfast gaze on the fading landmarks. The land breeze had shifted round to the southeast and blew sharply against her face, brushing the fair hair into her eyes and beating a more vivid color into the delicately tinted cheeks. No one spoke to her, no one seemed to know her. Presently, when land had faded into the horizon, she turned quietly as one who has accomplished a self-imposed task and went below deck.

Gradually the uneasy, restless groups of passengers scattered and vanished and the great liner settled down to her task. The breeze stiffened, and the quiet of the harbor waters changed to a crestless, sullen swell. As night crept out in pursuit of the flying traveler, thin, ghost-like lines of white flashed through the yellow stream of ship's lights, and far forward at lessening intervals there sounded a dull, menacing boom of awakened monsters.

“A rough night,” someone called cheerily along the passage.

The girl in the single-cabin went across to her porthole and looked out. Every movement of her slim body was balanced, accustomed, responsive to every movement of the vessel. She might have been in the bedroom of an ordinary hotel, looking out casually on the storm-swept, city streets. Then, with the same careless comfort, she slipped out of the sable coat and began to unpack. The contents of the trunk were curious, however—two elaborate evening-dresses, an expensive-looking afternoon gown, two hats—visibly the possessions of wealth and an exquisite taste for the beautiful and costly—the rest were little more than rags. It was almost as though two personalities had been jumbled together by a ridiculously inconsequent hand. The girl chose out the more ornate evening dress of the two, then uncoiling her long fair hair began a toilette whose elaborateness suggested some great social function. Yet an hour later when she entered the dining-saloon of the Atlantic it was to confront an oppressive desolation; the rising storm had, in fact, proved too much for the vast majority, and only a handful of the two hundred first-class passengers had taken their places. Amongst these were the man Brian Monkhouse and, some seats further down the long, empty table, Gilbert Haig and his companion. The two latter glanced up at the newcomer as she entered and a certain vague look of puzzlement dawned in Haig's openly curious stare. He made an irresolute bow, but she appeared not to see him, and took her place quietly opposite Monkhouse, ignoring him as he ignored her. Throughout the meal she remained thus coldly unconscious of her human surroundings. Neither the dull, menacing boom of the seas as they flung themselves on the great liner in their flight before the wind nor the vessel's shuddering rise from beneath their blows seemed to arouse her even to a recognition of their significance. She sat undisturbed, eating with the deliberate relish of a gourmet, and between the courses her eyes passed unconcernedly round the gaudily ornate saloon, resting for an instant on every outstanding detail, but seeing no one. But from the moment of her entry she had become the center of a curiously antagonistic curiosity. She was incongruously beautiful, somewhat insolently indifferent in her isolation. Only men were present, and they had not troubled to change into evening clothes, relying on their nautical superiority to assure them a go-as-you-please freedom from convention. And she sat amongst them as a challenging comment, her loveliness surrounding her with a wall of white-hot light which at once attracted and repelled. Even Monkhouse, moodily engrossed in his food, was constrained to glance up at her, and as he did so something passed over his features, a fleeting look of recollected trouble which passed instantly. He did not look at her again. But Haig, with his eyes on her face, leaned towards his companion, and spoke openly of her.

“Of course, now I remember—couldn't place her for the moment. It's Ray East—from the Broadway. I was at a supper party with her and a whole flight of other birds of the same feather. She got a gold bracelet off me. Pretty, isn't she, but couldn't act for nuts, and as chilly as an iceberg. I suppose they've sacked her. A pretty face isn't everything, you know.”

It is better than nothing on a five days' sea journey, however, and half an hour later Haig sought for it in the drawing-room and afterwards in all the most sheltered portions of the ship. He found Ray East where he least expected to find her, near the stern of the vessel, her fragile dress protected by the sable coat, but her head bare to the flying wind. Haig came up to her and spoke to her, but the call of the coming storm drowned his voice and he touched her on the arm. She turned and looked at him. The dim light of a ship's lantern was on his face, but her expression was blank, showing no sign of recognition.

“You don't remember me,” he said, leaning forward so as to make himself audible; “but I remember you. You're Ray East.”

“Yes, I am Miss East,” she returned gravely.

He laughed.

“Oh, come, that's rather stiff, isn't it? I'm Gilbert Haig. We had supper together at the Martinique last fall and—”

“I have forgotten,” she interrupted with a cold significance.

“Don't be a little idiot.” He came closer, clinging to the taffrail as the ship lurched heavily. “You always were stiff, dear girl, but it's really rather too much of a thing, cutting an old pal. Why, I used to send you flowers, loads of them, and jolly pleased you were to get them. It encouraged the management.”

She drew away from him.

“I do remember you,” she said with a stifled gasp as the wind flung past her in a spasm of renewed fury, “and you were always insolent, Mr. Haig.”

“Thanks.” He was getting angry. Having made very sure of this much entertainment over a boring period of inactivity, the rebuff, taken together with the tempest, pricked his good-humored self-satisfaction to a petulant resentment. “And you were always rude, Miss East. Only in those days you were more careful.”

“As you insinuated—there was the management to be considered,” she returned.

“You bore with the flowers, then, for the management's sake?”

She nodded, and he made a last effort to appear composed. “I suppose you accepted that bracelet you are wearing for the same reason?”

“I won it in a wager,” she retorted. “You know that as well as I do.”

She turned her head to look at him, and what she saw written on his pale, dissipated face seemed to decide her. She leaned back against the taffrail and unfastened the gold bracelet with steady fingers. For an instant she held the yellow, shining chain at arm's length over the boiling water beneath them and let it fall. It passed like a tiny flash of light.

“I think that ends the subject,” she said.

“By God—” He lost his temper suddenly and completely, and caught her roughly by the wrist. She wrenched herself free, and the rolling of the ship separated them. Before Haig could recover his balance a shadow had fallen between them and instinctively both turned. The light was too uncertain for the recognition of the intruder's features, but the great shoulders cut in silhouette against the dim halo of a lantern were unmistakable. He said nothing, though he stood so close that his outstretched hand could have reached Haig's shoulder, and apparently he was gazing past the man and woman before him with a sightless indifference. Yet he remained standing there with a cool determination that was also brutal and mannerless and wholly effective. Haig stared at him in helpless fury, then shrugged his shoulders.

“A friend of yours, Miss East? I intrude?” Receiving no answer he lifted his hat with an exaggerated courtesy. “As you say—that closes the subject.” And swinging on his heel he fought his way back to the shelter of the companion-way.

Brian Monkhouse remained sightless and indifferent. Ray East had turned her back on him, her face to the biting wind, her eyes intent on the storm-lashed darkness, and suddenly her resolution seemed to get the better of his. He took a step forward so that he confronted her, sheltering her from the hurricane.

“Ought I to apologize?” he asked curtly. “I have been trying to make up my mind. Some women—like that sort of thing.”

She looked up at him. The fitful light was on his face, throwing black shadows into the eyes and into the furrows which took on the jagged, ugly look of scars. Her own face was set with something more than anger.

“If that is your opinion of women, I can understand your hesitation,” she said. “I only wonder that you interfered.”

“I dislike that type of man,” he returned imperturbably. “It amused me to annoy him.”

“In that case, since I played no part in your consideration, I owe you no thanks, and you owe me no apologies.”

Still he stood there looking down at her, and she loosened her grip of the taffrail and turned with a movement of repugnance and impatience. The next moment a giant wave rising up out of the darkness boomed against the vessel's side and flung along sheet of flying spray into her face. She recoiled and Monkhouse caught her and held her. The attack had been so sudden and violent that both were in danger of losing their footholds, and it was only as the vessel steadied from the shock that Ray East freed herself from her companion's grip. She was panting, and the hand which brushed the wet hair from her face trembled.

“I don't apologise, he said grimly.

“You don't need to,” she returned breathlessly. “It's rather an irony of fate—but I do thank you.”

He looked at her with a puzzled frown, then held out his arm.

“I am going to see you below deck,” he announced. “It's getting too rough for either of us and I am not going to leave you here, Miss East.”

“Do you know my name, then?”

“As you know mine.”

A faint smile relieved the hard line of her lips.

“How do you know I know?”

“By the way you shrink from my assistance—that is the attitude of all decent people who either know me or of me. Blackguard Brian—I am called by most of my friends.”

She laid her hand on his arm.

“We had better go,” she said. “I am not above receiving help from anyone.”

He made no answer. He guided her securely over the slippery decks to the companion-way, and once out of reach of the storm he released her and drew away from her with an elaborate significance.

“You don't need to bow to me to-morrow on this account,” he said sneeringly. “I make no charge.”

“Do you wish me to bow?” she asked. Her eyes shone at him from under the fine brows. There was something in her expression, in the wild disarray of her fair hair that made her seem the very spirit of the tempest they had fled from. He met her gaze as though it were a challenge.

“I have not spoken like this to a woman like you for twenty years,” he said. “Yes—I do wish it.”

“I only ask of you to remember your wish,” she returned more lightly.

“Oh, I shall remember—if that is any compensation to you for the sacrifice. Good night, Miss East.”

“Good night.”

She appeared, however, not to have seen the hand he held out toward her. She ran down the companion-stairs and he stood looking after her, his ugly face once more shadowed by a puzzled, painful recollection.

Chapter 2

II

BRIAN MONKHOUSE went back to his cabin on the promenade deck, closed and locked the door and, sitting down by the table under the electric lamp, began a systematic reassortment of the papers which had been handed to him at New York. He worked hard, ignoring both the hour and the roar of the dying storm, and by two o'clock he flung the last bundle back into his despatch case with a sigh of grim satisfaction. A passenger list on his table attracted his attention and he picked it up and ran casually over the list. At “Miss R. East” he paused with the same frowning thoughtfulness with which he had considered the name's owner, and then, as though moved by a sudden impulse, he snatched at a small pocketbook lying amongst his. papers and opened it. For a minute he sat very still, the frown giving place to a smile of painful amusement. Then the little leather case was flung back to its place and Monkhouse, stretching himself, wearily rose to his feet.

It was at that moment that the boom and howl which swept round the ship like the voices of frustrated furies gave place to a new sound. It seemed to Monkhouse that he heard it long before the staggering shock flung him back violently against the table—but both sound and blow must have fallen simultaneously. Grinding, groaning from stem to stern, as though each plank and rivet in her voiced a common agony, the Atlantic recoiled upon herself, with a savage lashing of her propellers, flung forward again and then, slowly, painfully, slipped into the trough of the waves, rolling helplessly. The lights went out. Up to that moment a deadly quiet had followed on the hidden catastrophe, but with the passing into complete darkness a long wail of awful terror arose from every corner of the ship. It died down; and then came a rushing of feet—desperate, panic-stricken feet—the shouting of orders, the hoarse breathing of men as they groped their way along the passages congested with a flying, struggling mass of humanity. Beyond groping for a handful of his papers, Monkhouse made no attempt to find his belongings. Possibly he was seaman enough to recognize the curious, lifeless roll of the stricken ship. The lock of his door had jammed, and, without waiting to struggle with it, he drew back a few steps and flung the full weight of his great shoulders against the woodwork, bursting it outwards. The next instant he was being swept along with the invisible stream. The darkness was such that it seemed to him that he had lost his sight and was battling his way through a ghostly world of hands which clung to him, bodies which fell across his path, and human faces wet with terror. He felt them all though he could see nothing. One moment a man's hot cheek would be against his cheek—there would be a groan and a curse and the cheek would be against his knee—a scream of despair and it sank to the bottom of a torrent which knew no mercy. In this inferno of invisible substance Monkhouse kept his feet by virtue of his brute strength. Others went under, but he never stumbled. When the stream endangered him he held back; so long as he was sure of his foothold he allowed it to carry him forward—over everything. The position of his cabin made his passage to the open air of itself easy, but on the verge of his escape he was caught in a maelstrom of humanity surging from the lower decks. There the struggle became hideous—the more so because it was now almost noiseless. Men and women kept their strength to beat each other down, and those who fell went under with little more than a stifled gasp. And still Monkhouse kept on, freeing himself with merciless deliberation from the hands that held him, his eyes straining for the first glimpse of light and—by an irony of chance, it was at the moment when he felt the wind blow against his face that he was brought to a sudden standstill. Something warm had fallen against his knees—a hand stretched itself out of the blackness and clung to him. He seized it to shake it off and instead held it. Not for a second had he lost consciousness of his own danger. But the hand was pathetically small and fragile—its sheer weakness as it yielded to his rough pressure arrested him. He calculated what he risked and bent down.

“For pity's sake, help me—I have so much to live for!”

“Put your arms round my neck then—!”

It was done in an instant. He could not tell whether it were a woman or a child that he held, for his burden was frail and insignificant—the voice had been little more than a whisper. Yet it cost him an additional effort to fend off the ruthless force behind him, and even when he reached the deck there was still no relief. A ship's lantern twinkling somewhere overhead seemed to thicken the mantle of darkness which hid the writhing, desperate crowd as it tossed backwards and forwards in frenzied search of safety. The shouted commands from the bridge, culminating in a revolver shot, were lost in the tumult. and the ominousness of the greater terror. Had the gloom lifted only for a moment, men and women might have gripped their courage and met the inevitable unflinchingly; but the invisible death bearing down on them from they knew not where left them with nothing but an instinct to follow. Monkhouse alone made no effort to join in the deadly, purposeless rushes. He drew back against the deckhouse, and found himself, as he had hoped, in a clear space. It was there that a steady hand touched him on the arm.

“On the port side—aft. They're lowering a boat. Go round quietly. We can't hope to save many or give the women first show. The dynamos have gone wrong and we can't last an hour. You'd better take a chance with the boat. Thank God the storm's dying.”

Monkhouse recognized the quiet tones of authority, although the speaker was hidden from him.

“Where's the damage?” he asked.

“Bulkhead. Struck a derelict. Pray Heaven the steerage doesn't get loose. We're trying to keep them quiet, but the poor devils know they're done for and—”

The voice broke off and Monkhouse heard running steps along the deck which had already begun to slope perilously. He bent his head so that a soft, warm, woman's breath touched his face.

“You heard what he said,” he whispered. “I shall try and get round. But we must go quietly. If anyone found us it would be all up with them and us. Sheer waste of life—”

“Let me walk then,” the voice answered. “I can walk now—they trampled me down—”

“I know. But you'd better let me carry you. I know the ropes.”

“I am too heavy—”

He smiled grimly to himself but vouchsafed no answer. He had already begun to grope his way astern and he had not boasted of his abilities. With a sureness that was half instinct, half knowledge, he threaded his way through the hurrying, struggling packs of men and women, seeming to swerve round with them, in reality steadily keeping to his course. The woman he carried felt herself placed gently on her feet, though a powerful hand still supported her. By now the angle of the deck had become terrifying, and the swish of the water sounded almost immediately beneath her. Through the shrouding obscurity she could hear a voice, muffled with fear, harsh and unrecognizable with suppressed passion.

“I tell you—there's no room. Another may swamp the lot of us.”

The man beside her answered coolly:

“You've room for a woman even if you give her your place, my good friend.”

“None of that tosh. It's each man for himself. Damn you—stand clear, will you?”

She heard the creak of straining pulleys—a scuffle and then a savage oath.

“You infernal coward—there are only five of you—if you don't take this woman I'll call down the whole crowd on to you.”

“If you do—” The voice snapped like a broken string. Far forward a new tumult had broken loose—a medley of shouts scarcely human in their frenzy. Revolver shots followed each other in quick succession and for an instant predominated,

“The steerage,” Monkhouse remarked casually. “They must have forced their way through. They'll be on you in an instant. How long do you need to get clear?”

“Three minutes.”

“If I run back I might distract them. I believe I can do it. Take this woman with you. It's a bargain.”

“Shove her in, then.”

Monkhouse turned quickly.

“You must risk it,” he said. “There's no hope here—”

“I shall not buy my safety at such a price,” she retorted fiercely.

“There's no time for such quixotic nonsense. You're risking all our lives—” He broke off and added roughly, satirically: “Afford me this last and only satisfaction of a misspent life.”

He felt her small hands cling to him.

“I don't know who you are—but it couldn't have been misspent—I shall think of you every night of my life and thank you and pray for you—take this in memory—”

Something small and hard was thrust into his hand. He laughed under his breath and pushed her from him into the arms of her unwilling rescuers. Then he turned and ran forward. There was now no time to lose. On her port side the decks of the Atlantic were already awash, and she had the curious, sluggish roll of a water-logged ship on the point of foundering. Monkhouse stumbled in the direction of the despairing shouts and came to a standstill, blinded by the flood of white light which poured over the scene of the disaster. He understood instantly. Some heroic soul, sticking to his job in the inferno below decks, had brought the dynamos into working order—but too late. The ironic illumination revealed only the nearness of the end. The Atlantic, wallowing in the trough of the waves, seemed to have broken up already into a shapeless, bodyless thing of funnels and twisted iron. Walls of green, phosphorescent water, gleaming in the light, rolled up on either hand and rolled back again as though patiently awaiting the instant when they should close over forever. The scene held even the mad crowd of steerage in abeyance. Those who could keep their footing shrank back against the deckhouse—others were spilled overboard. But one thing they saw at last—the half-filled boats on the port side, and the instant's paralysis passed. The leaders led the rush, and it was a leader whom Monkhouse flung back so that he rolled down the full length of the deck and vanished like a pebble thrown into a bottomless lake.

“Keep back!” Monkhouse thundered at them. “Don't you see it's too late?”