He ceased, for a sudden burning wave of color flooded her to the
temples. Her white throat and bosom were tinged with the red stain.
He bit his lip in chagrin, seeing her recoil from him. Fair women were
not wont to turn their eyes from Dunoisse. He began, in much less
confident tones, to exonerate himself:
“In the world of to-day, Mademoiselle, especially the world of Paris,
one is compelled to abandon high ideals of life and forsake the more
rigid standards of conduct. One is forced....”
She looked at him full, and the scathing, merciless contempt in her
great eyes both froze and scorched him. He stammered, bungled, broke
down. The clear voice said with a cutting edge of irony:
“The boy of whom my dear old friend, Miss Caroline Smithwick, spoke
with so much affection; the young man of whom she was so proud, was not
to be ‘compelled’ or ‘forced’ to turn from the path of truth and honor
by any stress of circumstances. You have changed very much, Colonel
Dunoisse, since you visited her in Cavendish Street! Good-night to you,
and good-by!”
The tall, white-robed figure was sweeping to the door, when it stopped,
and turned, and came back again. She said, with almost a pleading look:
“But I cannot leave you so, remembering how true and kind you were to
_her_. My fault is to be over hasty in judgment, I fear.” She added:
“There must be many excuses that you could make for yourself, and are
too proud and too reserved to offer.... Especially to one who has no
claim upon your confidence; so let us part friends, even though we
never meet as friends again!”
He took the white, firm hand she held out. He had thought her insular
and prejudiced, narrow-minded and intolerant. Some magic in her touch
wrought a change in him. He said in a far different tone:
“That I have sinned against your ideals of character and principle is
my punishment. Tell me--Miss Merling--if I had been the kind of man
you thought me--if I had come back to Cavendish Street and sought your
friendship--would it have been denied?”
“No!” she said, looking in his face with beautiful candor. “For I saw
much to admire and to respect in you--as you were in days gone by.”
“The world dubbed me, very plainly--a fool for being what I was in
those days,” returned Dunoisse, with a slight deprecatory lift of
shoulders and eyebrows. “And frankly, Mademoiselle, I had not the
courage requisite to go against the world.”
“If you were a fool, you were God’s fool,” she answered him, “and such
folly is superior to the wisdom of the sages. Now, good-by, Colonel
Dunoisse.”
And, with a slight inclination of the head, she withdrew her hand and
moved away, as the farther door of the library opened, admitting Madame
Walewski, her homeliness painfully accentuated by her dazzling dress
of gold brocade and famous _parure_ of Brazilian emeralds; and another
lady, dark-haired, sweet-faced, and of middle height, dressed in
half-mourning, towards whom Ada Merling hurried, saying in a tremulous
whisper as she caught the outstretched hand:
“Oh, Mary, come!....”
And then the three ladies were gone, retreating by that farther door
into unknown, conjectural regions; and the velvet curtain lifted and
dropped behind Dunoisse, and he turned, instinctively drawing the
Prince’s letter from his breast, to meet the radiant blue eyes and
graceful, cordial greeting of Count Walewski, and to be presented to
the Ambassador’s companion, Lord Walmerston....
You saw the all-powerful Foreign Minister as a hale, vigorous, elderly
gentleman, displaying a star, and the broad red ribbon and oval gold
badge of a Civil G.C.B., and the befrogged and gold-laced swallow-tail
of official ceremony rather awkwardly, upon a heavy-shouldered,
somewhat clumsy figure, though the black silk stockings showed
well-made legs, and gold-buckled, patent-leather shoes set off the
small, neat feet.
Little enough remained at this period of the dandified elegance
that had won repute at Almack’s in 1820, and the grace that had
made him famous in the waltz. The weather-beaten face, surrounded
by pepper-and-salt hair and whiskers, the square-ended, sagacious
nose and flexible, curving lips, might have belonged to a shrewd,
humorous, Northern farmer rather than a brilliant statesman; while the
jerky manner, the odd gesticulations that accompanied the hesitating,
drawling speech, made the stranger to whom it was addressed ask himself
in wonder whether this could really be the great orator, the dazzling
politician, the famous diplomat who had steered England’s ship of State
through so many troubled foreign seas? until the keen, dark, glittering
eyes met and held his own; and under the merciless, piercing scrutiny
of their regard the querist ceased to question, and the critic found
himself appraised, weighed, judged, and valued by a mind without its
parallel in the science of reading men.
One phrase employed by him was to linger in Dunoisse’s memory. He said,
as Walewski handed him the letter from the Élysée, and he wiped his
tortoiseshell-rimmed eyeglasses to read:
“You herald the event after its occurrence, Colonel.”
And a moment later, folding up the sheet and returning it:
“His Imperial Highness certainly owes less to a fortuitous concourse
of atoms than to his own ability, energy, and tact.” He added with
emphasis: “This is an immense act; its importance can hardly be
overestimated. For my part, I officially recognize it, and shall adhere
to my determination to support it.”
Then, as Walewski, flushed with a triumph he could hardly control,
murmured a gracefully-worded, low-toned entreaty, he responded:
“Ah! I understand. You wish me to write a line to His Imperial
Highness, recapitulating what I have just said, to be conveyed with
your own loyal congratulations by his messenger?...”
Walewski, unable to trust himself to speak, bowed assent. Perhaps the
hand that held the tortoiseshell-rimmed eyeglasses knew a moment of
unsteadiness as its owner’s swift brain balanced the question of risks.
Then, with characteristic boldness, my lord took the leap.
“Certainly, my dear Count--certainly. I see no objection at all!”
And, with a slight jerky nod of dismissal for Dunoisse, accompanied
by a not unkindly glance of the hard, powerful, dark brown eyes, the
stooping figure of England’s great Foreign Minister moved forwards
to the writing-table and penned the single, brief, emphatic line
of approval, that burned the writer’s boats and brought about the
downfall from which he was to rise, with popularity enhanced and power
redoubled, within the space of a year.
* * * * *
An hour or so of fevered sleep in a luxurious bedroom, ringing with the
clatter of late cabs and early milk-carts upon London paving-stones,
and Dunoisse was on the iron road again. As he leaned back, with folded
arms, in the first-class compartment that had no other passenger, his
imagination followed Ada Merling back to the Hospice in Cavendish
Street. But it was to a house in Park Lane that swiftly-trotting hoofs
and rapidly-rolling wheels had carried her when she had left the
Embassy on the night before.