"THIS IS GARETH"
I was in the act of going to the Duke and my fingers were all but on
the handle of the door, when I recalled the idea which had flashed upon
me an hour before when with Gareth, and instantly I resolved to act
upon it.
Running back into the room where I had been with Count Gustav, I wrote
two lines to his Excellency.
"I have made one mistake. Count Gustav's marriage is legal. Gareth is
really his wife. Let the Duke know this."
I sent James Perry in with this note to the General and a message that
I would be with him in one minute.
Then I ran up to Gareth. The poor child was sick from the suspense;
but I noticed with intense satisfaction that she had been filling up
some of the weary time of waiting by making herself look as pretty as
possible.
"Is he here, Christabel? Oh, how my heart beats."
"Yes, dear, he is here. He is with your father now, telling him all;
and you are to come with me to the Duke." I put it so intentionally,
that she might believe Gustav had expressed the wish.
"What do we not owe you, Christabel?" she cried, kissing me tenderly.
"But I'd rather see Kar--Gustav, first. I've been practising that name
ever since you left me; but it sounds so strange. The other will come
out first."
"Try and remember it with the Duke, Gareth. It doesn't matter with any
one else so much."
"Oh, I can't go to him. I can't. He is such a stern and terrible old
man, so--Gustav says. I got it nearly right that, time, didn't I?" and
she laughed.
"It will soon come quite naturally, dear. Are you ready? He may not
like it if we keep him waiting."
I looked at her critically, gave a touch or two to her fair hair, and
kissed her. "You look very beautiful, Gareth."
"I feel very frightened," she said, and clung to me as we went down the
stairs. I believe I was almost as nervous as she could have been; for
I was indeed drawing a bow at a venture. But I dared not let her guess
my feelings, lest she should run back upstairs.
So I took her hand and pushed on steadily, and when James opened the
door of the room I led her right across to where the Duke sat, and,
with my heart thumping against my ribs I said, just as I had thought to
say:
"This is Gareth, Duke Ladislas."
His bird-like face was as black as a night-storm. His keen eyes
watched us both, glancing swiftly from my face to Gareth's, and from
her back to me as we hurried across the room. The heavy brows were
pent, and when we stood in front of him there came an ominous
pause--like the calm when the storm is to burst.
Gareth was so frightened by this reception that the clutch of her
fingers tightened on mine. I felt her trembling and saw her colour go,
as she flinched with a little gasping catch of the breath all eloquent
of fear.
His Excellency had risen at our entrance, and I saw him stare with a
start of astonishment at Gareth, and from her to the stern old Duke;
and then he lowered his head and closed his eyes, and I noticed that he
clenched his right hand. He feared as much as I did for the result of
my experiment.
The silence was almost intolerable; those vulture eyes fixed with
deadly intentness upon us both, and the hard unyielding face set in the
stern, cold, impassive, expressionless scrutiny.
Bitterly I began to repent my rashness, when a great change came,
wrought by Gareth.
With surely one of the happiest instincts that ever came to a child,
half helpless as she was with fright, she slipped her fingers from mine
and, throwing herself on her knees at the Duke's feet, she caught his
hand and held it and looked up frankly in his face and cried:
[Illustration: "Throwing herself on her knees at the Duke's feet."]
"It was all my fault, sir. I pray God and you to forgive him."
Just that; no more. No tears, no wailings, no hysterics. Just the
frank statement of what her pure, innocent, simple heart believed to be
the truth--the whole truth as it seemed to her; as no one looking down
into her eyes could doubt.
The Duke could not. I did not look for emotion from him. He stared
down at her; but gradually I saw the furrows on the forehead relax, and
the eyes soften. Then the lids shut down over the glitter, his free
hand was placed gently on the golden head, and bending forward he
kissed her on the forehead.
"Gareth."
Then his Excellency did what I could have kissed him for doing; for I
was past thinking what to do just then.
"I wish to speak to you," he whispered to me; and we both crept away
out of the room as softly as though we had been two children stealing
off in fear from some suddenly discovered terror.
The moment we reached the room where I had spoken to Count Gustav, his
Excellency surprised me. "You knew it, of course; but how? You are
wonderful, Christabel!"
"Knew what?"
"Do you mean you did not know? Then it is a miracle. I thought you
knew and had planned it; and I marvelled that even you had courage
enough for such a daring stroke."
"I drew a bow at a venture; and don't understand you."
"Do you tell me that you believed any mere pink and white young girl
picked out at random would make an impression upon that crusted mass of
self-will, obstinacy, and inflexibility of purpose? You--with your
keen wit and sense of humour, Christabel!"
"You could see the impression for yourself, surely," I retorted.
"This is positively delicious! I really must enjoy it a little longer
without enlightening you. You do really believe that the Duke was
melted because that child is very pretty and has innocent eyes? You
must give up reading us humans, Christabel; you really must, after
this."
"It seems strange to such a cynic, I suppose, that innocence can plead
for itself convincingly to such nature as the Duke's!"
"You intend that to be very severe--but it isn't. Innocence, as
innocence, would have no more chance with Duke Ladislas, if it stood in
the way of his plans, than a troutlet would have in the jaws of a
hungry pike. The humour of it is that you should have thought
otherwise, and actually have--have dangled the pretty troutlet right
before the pike's nose."
"It has not been so unsuccessful."
"I am sorry for you, Christabel," he answered, assuming the air of a
stern mentor; "but it is my unfortunate duty to administer a severe
corrective to your--what shall I term it--your overweening
self-confidence."
"I have given you considerable enjoyment at any rate."
His eyes were twinkling and he shook his forefinger at me with
exaggerated gravity. "I am afraid that at this moment, very much
afraid, you are rather puffed up with self-congratulation at the result
of this master-stroke of yours."
"It is more to the point to think whether it will succeed."
"Oh yes, it will succeed; but why, do you think? Not because of that
child's innocence or pretty pink and whiteness; and certainly not
because the Duke was in any mood to be impressed. Now, there is a
problem for you. When I gave him those three lines you sent into me,
his fury was indescribable. Not against Gustav, mark you: he stands by
him through any storm and stress--but against the wife. He was
speechless with suppressed rage; and right in the midst of it in you
came with your--'This is Gareth'--and you know the rest. There's the
riddle; now, what's the answer?"
I thought closely, and then gave it up. There was obviously some
influence at work which I did not understand. "You have your wish.
You have pricked the bladder of my self-conceit; I've been floating
with somebody else's life belt, I see that."
"Do you think you feel sufficiently humble?"
"Yes, quite humiliated," I admitted with a smile.
"Then, I'll tell you. The clue is to be sought for in the years of
long ago. The Duke has been married twice; and his first wife was
named Gareth, and the only child of the union was Gareth also; just
such a girl as that sweet little thing you brought into him to-day--and
so like both the idolized dead wife and dead child as to bring right up
before him in living flesh the one dead romance of his life. Now you
see what you did?"
"What will he do?"
"I should very much like to know. I am afraid you have got your way,
and that he'll accept her as his daughter; and then--phew, I don't know
what will come next. Only recently a very different sort of marriage
had been planned for Gustav; one that would have strengthened the
position as much as that child there will weaken it. I don't envy the
Duke his decision. How does Gustav feel toward her?"
"I believe he still cares for her--but you know him."
"I wish I could think there was happiness for her. Those whom the gods
love, die young--I'm not sure that if I were the gods, I wouldn't
choose that solution."
"It is not for you to settle, fortunately, but for the Duke."
"True; but he can only give her Gustav--and that may be a long, long
way different from happiness." He paused and with a slow smile added:
"This may affect you as well."
"I am thinking of Gareth just now."
"The same thing--from a different angle, Christabel, that's all. If
this marriage is publicly recognized, Karl will be again the
acknowledged heir; the axis of things will be shifted; and the motive
for the Duke's promise to you last night will be gone. It will be hard
if you should have done so great a right and yet pay the price. It is
well that you are strong."
"I have the Duke's word."
"Can you keep water in an open funnel?"
I turned away with a sigh and looked out of the window. His Excellency
came to my side and laid a hand very gently and kindly on my shoulder.
A touch of genuine sympathy.
"Almost, _I_ could hope, Christabel--but thank God, I am not the Duke.
I was a very presumptuous old man--only a day or two back---but you
have made me care for you in a very different way. I am presumptuous
no longer; and all that I am and all that I have shall be staked and
lost before I see injustice done to you."
"I know what a friend you are."
"Pray Heaven, this may not be beyond our friendship."
I could not answer him. I stood staring blankly out into the garden
realizing all that was behind his words. I knew he might have spoken
no more than the truth; and that in gaining Gareth's happiness, I had
ventured my own future.
Not for a moment did I distrust Karl; but I knew the influences which
might be brought to bear upon him. If Gustav was no longer to be
preferred as the Duke's heir and Karl was not to be allowed to forego
his rights as elder son, our marriage became impossible.
I had worked for this, I know; had planned that it should be; had
forced it home upon Karl himself; and had even found pleasure in the
thought of the sacrifice it involved.
But since then I had taken to my heart such different thoughts. The
Duke had with his own hands swept away the barrier to our marriage; and
Karl himself had shown me within the past hour how much it was to him.
It is one thing to stand outside the Palace of Delight and, in the
knowledge that admission is impossible to you, be firm in a refusal to
enter; but it is another and a very different thing, when the gates
stand open and your foot is already on the very threshold and loving
hands are beckoning to you with sweet invitation to enter, to find the
portal closed in your face, and yourself shut again in the outer
darkness.
It is little wonder, therefore, if my heart began to ache again in
dread of the cold solitude which threatened to be the reward for my
share in that day's doings.
It was all quite clear to me, as I stared out into the garden, seeing
nothing that was actually there; nothing but the troubled forms which
my thoughts assumed. And although I murmured and rebelled against it
all, I knew in my heart that at the last neither Karl's desires nor
mine would be allowed to decide what should be done.
My kind old friend, discerning the struggle that was taking place in my
thoughts, left me at first to fight it out in my own way, but presently
came, and in the same sympathetic way laid a hand on my arm.
"You must not take too black a view, Christabel," he said. "It may all
be yet for the best. I thought only to prepare you."
"It is over," I said, with a smile. "I have taken my decision. It
shall be as the Duke decides."
"I know how it must be with you," he replied, very gently.
The kindness of his manner seemed in some strange way to hurt me
almost; at least it made me conscious of the pain of everything; and I
lowered my head and wrung my hands in silence.
Then a door opened in the hall.
"Christabel, Christabel!" It was Gareth's voice, sweet and glad.
"Go to her, please, I--I cannot for the moment."
He went at once and did what was of course the best thing to do--he
brought her to me.
"The Duke wishes to see Gustav alone," he said. A glance at his face
told me my plan had succeeded.
Gareth caught my arm nervously. "I heard angry voices in one of the
rooms, Christabel--my father's and Kar--Gustav's. What does it mean?"
"All will be well now that you have seen the Duke, dearest. Stay here
a minute until I come for you."
I believed it now and felt very happy as I kissed her and she kissed me
in response.
"I owe it you, Christabel," she whispered. "I will wait."
I went out with the General and closed the door upon her.
"You must do all that may have to be done now," I said, weakly. "I
have finished, and can do no more. Count Gustav is there with Colonel
Katona and Count Karl. Will you fetch him?" and I pointed to the room
from which the sounds of voices loud in anger were to be heard.
But even as I spoke, the door was flung open violently, and Colonel
Katona and Gustav came out.
"No, by God, no, you are too great a villain," cried the Colonel
fiercely, and then seeing who was with me, he stopped abruptly.
In the pause I glanced through into the room and saw Karl staring after
the other two.
Our eyes met, and he flung up his hands with a gesture of consternation
and despair.