Produced by Al Haines
BY WIT OF WOMAN
By
ARTHUR W. MARCHMONT
_Author of "When I was Czar" "By Snare of Love" "A Dash for a Throne"
etc etc_
ILLUSTRATIONS BY S. H. VEDDER
LONDON
WARD LOCK & CO. LIMITED
1906
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I FROM BEYOND THE PALE
II A CHESS OPENING
III MY PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
IV MADAME D'ARTELLE
V A NIGHT ADVENTURE
VI GARETH
VII GARETH'S FATHER
VIII COUNT KARL
IX I COME TO TERMS WITH MADAME
X A DRAMATIC STROKE
XI PLAIN TALK
XII HIS EXCELLENCY AGAIN
XIII GETTING READY
XIV I ELOPE
XV AN EMBARRASSING DRIVE
XVI A WISP OF RIBBON
XVII IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
XVIII THE COST OF VICTORY
XIX A TRAGI-COMEDY
XX MY ARREST
XXI HIS EXCELLENCY TO THE RESCUE
XXII COLONEL KATONA SPEAKS
XXIII A GREEK GIFT
XXIV WHAT THE DUKE MEANT
XXV ON THE THRESHOLD
XXVI FACE TO FACE
XXVII "THIS IS GARETH"
XXVIII THE COLONEL'S SECRET
XXIX A SINGULAR TRUCE
XXX THE END
ILLUSTRATIONS
"He held out his hand when Madame presented him."
"The two scoundrels pulled up at the sight of it."
"Throwing herself on her knees at the Duke's feet."
CHAPTER I
FROM BEYOND THE PALE
"To John P. Gilmore, Jefferson City, Missouri, U.S.A.
"MY DEAR BROTHER-IN-LAW,--For years you have believed me dead, and I
have made no effort to disturb that belief.
"I am dying now, alone in Paris, far from my beloved country; unjustly
degraded, dishonoured and defamed. This letter and its enclosure will
not be despatched until the grave has closed over me.
"To you I owe a debt of deep gratitude. You have taken and cared for
my darling child, Christabel; you have stood between her and the world,
and have spared her from the knowledge and burden of her father's
unmerited shame. You can yet do something more--give her your name, so
that mine with its disgrace may be forgotten; unless--it is a wild
thought that has come to me in my last hours, the offspring of my
hopeless melancholy--unless she should ever prove to have the strength,
the courage, the wit and the will to essay that which I have
endeavoured fruitlessly--the clearance of my name and honour.
"When ruin first fell upon me, I made a vow never to reveal myself to
her until I had cleared my name and hers from the stain of this
disgrace. I have kept the vow--God knows at what sorrow to myself and
against what temptation in these last lonely years--and shall keep it
now to the end.
"The issue I leave to you. If you deem it best, let her continue to
believe that I died years ago. If otherwise, give her the enclosed
paper--the story of my cruel wrong--and tell her that during the last
years of my life my thoughts were all of her, that my heart yearned for
her, and that my last conscious breath will be spent in uttering her
name and blessing her.
"Such relics of my once great fortune as I have, I am sending to you
for my Christabel.
"Adieu.
"ERNST VON DRESCHLER, COUNT MELNIK."
"To my Daughter, Christabel von Dreschler.
"MY DEAREST CHILD,--If you are ever to read these lines it will be
because your uncle believes you are fitted to take up the task of
clearing our name, from the stain of crime which the villainy of others
has put upon it. But whether you will make the effort must be decided
finally by yourself alone. For two years I have tried, with such
strength as was left to me by those who did me this foul wrong, and I
have failed. Were you a son, I should lay this task upon you as a
solemn charge; but you are only a girl, and left in your hands, it
would be all but hopeless, because of both its difficulty and probable
danger. I leave you free to decide: for the reason that if you have
not the personal capacity to make the decision, you will not have in
you the power to succeed. One thing only I enjoin upon you. If you
cannot clear my name, do not bear it.
"I have not strength to write out in full all the details of the
matter, but I give you the main outline here and send in this packet
many memoranda which I have made from time to time. These will give
you much that you need.
"At the time of your mother's death and your leaving Hungary for the
United States I was, as you may remember, a colonel in the
Austro-Hungarian army, in possession of my title and estates, and in
favour with one of the two most powerful of all the great Slav nobles,
Ladislas, Duke of Kremnitz. I continued, as I believed, to enjoy his
confidence for two years longer, up to the last, indeed. He was one of
the leaders of the Patriots--the great patriotic movement which you
will find described in the papers I send you--the other being the
Hungarian magnate, Duke Alexinatz of Waitzen. Two of my friends, whose
names you must remember, were Major Katona, my intimate associate, and
Colonel von Erlanger, whom I knew less well.
"If the Patriots were successful, the Hungarian Throne was to be filled
by Duke Alexinatz with reversion to his only son, Count Stephen; and it
is necessary for you to understand that this arrangement was expressly
made by Duke Ladislas himself.
"So matters stood when, one day, some hot words passed between young
Count Stephen and myself, and he insulted me grossly. Two days later,
Major Katona came to my house at night in great agitation. He declared
that the Count had sworn to shoot me, and that his father had espoused
his side in the quarrel and threatened to have me imprisoned; and that
Duke Ladislas, unwilling to quarrel with Duke Alexinatz, although
taking my part in the affair, desired me to absent myself from
Buda-Pesth until the storm had blown over. He pressed me to leave
instantly; and, suspecting nothing, I yielded. I had scarcely left my
house when the carriage was stopped, I was seized, gagged, and
blindfolded, and driven for many hours in this condition, and then
imprisoned. I believed that I was in the hands of the agents of Duke
Alexinatz; and continued in this belief for six years, during the whole
of which time I was kept a close prisoner.
"Then at length I escaped: my strength sapped, my mind impaired and my
spirit broken by my captivity; and learned that I had been branded as a
murderer with a price set on my head.
"On the night when I had left, the young Count Stephen had been found
shot in my house; my flight was accepted as proof of my guilt, and,
most infamous of all, a confession of having murdered him had been made
public with my signature attached to it.
"That is the mystery, as it stands to-day. The God I am soon to meet
face to face knows my heart and that I am innocent; but prove it I
cannot. May He give you the strength and means denied to me to solve
the mystery.
"With this awful shadow upon me, I could not seek you out, let my heart
ache and stab as it would with longing for a sight of your face and a
touch of your hand. I thank God I have still been man enough--feeble
as my mind is after my imprisonment--to keep away from you.
"This sad story you will never know, unless your uncle deems it for the
best.
"That God may keep you happy and bless you is the last prayer of your
unhappy father,
"ERNST VON DRESCHLER."
* * * * *
My Uncle Gilmore had been dead three months, having left me his fortune
and his name, when, in sorting his old papers to destroy them, I came
upon these letters.
They were two years old; and it was evident that while my uncle had
intentionally kept them from me, he had at the same time been unwilling
to destroy them.
My poor, poor father!