There was good copy for the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic
in the news that the famous lyric soprano, Margarita da Cordova, whose
real name was Miss Margaret Donne, was engaged to Monsieur Konstantin
Logotheti, a Greek financier of large fortune established in Paris,
and almost as well known to art-collectors as to needy governments,
would-be promoters, and mothers of marriageable daughters. The mothers
experienced a momentary depression such as Logotheti himself felt when
an historical Van Dyck which he wanted was secretly sold out of a
palace in Genoa to a rival collector and millionaire for a price which
he would willingly have given; the people he knew shrugged their
shoulders at the news that he was to marry a singer, or shook their
heads wisely, or smiled politely, according to the scale of the
manners they had inherited or acquired; the shopkeepers sent him
thousands of insinuating invitations to inspect and buy all the things
which a rich man is supposed to give to his bride, from diamonds and
lace and eighty horse-power motor-cars to dressing-cases, stationery
and silver saucepans; and the newspapers were generously jubilant, and
rioted for a few days in a perfect carnival of adjectives.
The people who made the least fuss about the marriage were Cordova
and Logotheti themselves. They were both so well used to perpetual
publicity that they did not resent being written and talked about for
a time as if they were a treaty, a revolution, a divorce, or a
fraudulent trust. But they did not encourage the noise, nor go about
side by side in an offensively happy way, nor accept all the two
hundred and eighty-seven invitations to dine out together which they
received from their friends during three weeks. It was as much as
their overworked secretaries could do to answer all these within a
reasonable and decent time.
The engagement was made known during the height of the London season,
not long after they had both been at a week-end party at Craythew,
Lord Creedmore's place in Derbyshire, where they had apparently come
to a final understanding after knowing each other more than two years.
Margaret was engaged to sing at Covent Garden that summer, and the
first mention of the match was coupled with the information that she
intended to cancel all her engagements and never appear in public
again. The result was that the next time she came down the stage to
sing the Waltz Song in _Romeo and Juliet_ she received a tremendous
ovation before she opened her handsome lips, and another when she had
finished the air; and she spent one of the happiest evenings she
remembered.
Though she was at heart a nice English girl, not much over twenty-four
years of age, the orphan daughter of an Oxford don who had married an
American, she had developed, or fallen, to the point at which very
popular and successful artists cannot live at all without applause,
and are not happy unless they receive a certain amount of adulation.
Even the envy they excite in their rivals is delicious, if not almost
necessary to them.
Margaret's real nature had not been changed by a success that had been
altogether phenomenal and had probably not been approached by any
soprano since Madame Bonanni; but a second nature had grown upon it
and threatened to hide it from all but those who knew her very well
indeed. The inward Margaret was honest and brave, rather sensitive,
and still generous; the outward woman, the primadonna whom most people
saw, was self-possessed to a fault, imperious when contradicted, and
coolly ruthless when her artistic fame was at stake. The two natures
did not agree well together, and made her wretched when they
quarrelled, but Logotheti, who was going to take her for better, for
worse, professed to like them both, and was the only man she had ever
known who did. That was one reason why she was going to marry him,
after having refused him about a dozen times.
She had loved another man as much as she was capable of loving, and at
one time he had loved her, but a misunderstanding and her devotion to
her art had temporarily separated them; and later, when she had almost
told him that she would have him if he asked her, he had answered her
quite frankly that she was no longer the girl he had cared for, and he
had suddenly disappeared from her life altogether. So Logotheti,
brilliant, very rich, gifted, gay, and rather exotic in appearance
and manner, but tenacious as a bloodhound, had won the prize after a
struggle that had lasted two years. She had accepted him without much
enthusiasm at the last, and without any great show of feeling.
'Let's try it,' she had said, and he had been more than satisfied.
After a time, therefore, they told their friends that they were going
to 'try it.'
The only woman with whom the great singer was at all intimate was the
Countess Leven, Lord Creedmore's daughter, generally called 'Lady
Maud,' whose husband had been in the diplomacy, and, after vainly
trying to divorce her, had been killed in St. Petersburg by a bomb
meant for a Minister. The explosion had been so terrific that the dead
man's identity had only been established by means of his pocket-book,
which somehow escaped destruction. So Lady Maud was a childless widow
of eight-and-twenty. Her father, when he had no prospect of ever
succeeding to the title, had been a successful barrister, and then a
hard-working Member of Parliament, and he had been from boyhood the
close friend of Margaret's father. Hence the intimacy that grew up
quickly between the two women when they at last met, though they had
not known each other as children, because the lawyer had lived in town
and his friend in Oxford.
'So you're going to try it, my dear!' said Lady Maud, when she heard
the news.
She had a sweet low voice, and when she spoke now it was a little sad;
for she had 'tried it,' and it had failed miserably. But she knew
that the trial had not been a fair one; the only man she had ever
cared for had been killed in South Africa, and as she had not even the
excuse of having been engaged to him, she had married with
indifference the first handsome man with a good name and a fair
fortune who offered himself. He chanced to be a Russian diplomatist,
and he turned out a spendthrift and an unfaithful husband. She was too
kind-hearted to be glad that he had been blown to atoms by dynamite,
but she was much too natural not to enjoy the liberty restored to her
by his destruction; and she had not the least intention of ever
'trying it' again.
'You don't sound very enthusiastic,' laughed Margaret, who had no
misgivings to speak of, and was generally a cheerful person. 'If you
don't encourage me I may not go on.'
'There are two kinds of ruined gamblers,' answered Lady Maud; 'there
are those that still like to watch other people play, and those who
cannot bear the sight of a roulette table. I'm one of the second kind,
but I'll come to the wedding all the same, and cheer like mad, if you
ask me.'
'That's nice of you. I really think I mean to marry him, and I wish
you would help me with my wedding-gown, dear. It would be dreadful if
I looked like Juliet, or Elsa, or Lucia! Everybody would laugh,
especially as Konstantin is rather of the Romeo type, with his
almond-shaped eyes and his little black moustache! I suppose he really
is, isn't he?'
'Perhaps--just a little. But he is a very handsome fellow.'
Lady Maud's lips quivered, but Margaret did not see.
'Oh, I know!' she cried, laughing and shaking her head. 'You once
called him "exotic," and he is--but I'm awfully fond of him all the
same. Isn't that enough to marry on when there's everything else? You
really will help me with my gown, won't you? You're such an angel!'
'Oh, yes, I'll do anything you like. Are you going to have a regular
knock-down-and-drag-out smash at St. George's? The usual thing?'
Lady Maud did not despise slang, but she made it sound like music.
'No,' answered Margaret, rather regretfully. 'We cannot possibly be
married till the season's quite over, or perhaps in the autumn, and
then there will be nobody here. I'm not sure when I shall feel like
it! Besides, Konstantin hates that sort of thing.'
'Do you mean to say that you would like a show wedding in Hanover
Square?' inquired Lady Maud.
'I've never done anything in a church,' said the Primadonna, rather
enigmatically, but as if she would like to.
'"Anything in a church,"' repeated her friend, vaguely thoughtful, and
with the slightest possible interrogation. 'That's a funny way of
looking at it!'
Margaret was a little ashamed of what she had said so naturally.
'I think Konstantin would like to have it in a chapel-of-ease in the
Old Kent Road!' she said, laughing. 'He sometimes talks of being
married in tweeds and driving off in a hansom! Then he suggests going
to Constantinople and getting it done by the Patriarch, who is his
uncle. Really, that would be rather smart, wouldn't it?'
'Distinctly,' assented Lady Maud. 'But if you do that, I'm afraid I
cannot help you with the wedding-gown. I don't know anything about the
dress of a Fanariote bride.'
'Konstantin says they dress very well,' Margaret said. 'But of course
it is out of the question to do anything so ridiculous. It will end in
the chapel-of-ease, I'm sure. He always has his own way. That's
probably why I'm going to marry him, just because he insists on it. I
don't see any other very convincing reason.'
Lady Maud could not think of anything to say in answer to this; but as
she really liked the singer she thought it was a pity.
Paul Griggs, the veteran man of letters, smiled rather sadly when she
met him shopping in New Bond Street, and told him of Margaret's
engagement. He said that most great singers married because the only
way to the divorce court led up the steps of the altar. Though he knew
the world he was not a cynic, and Lady Maud herself wondered how long
it would be before Logotheti and his wife separated.
'But they are not married yet,' Griggs added, looking at her with the
quietly ready expression of a man who is willing that his indifferent
words should be taken to have a special meaning if the person to whom
he has spoken chooses, or is able, to understand them as they may be
understood, but who is quite safe from being suspected of suggesting
anything if there is no answering word or glance.
Lady Maud returned his look, but her handsome face grew rather cold.
'Do you know of any reason why the marriage should not take place?'
she inquired after a moment.
'If I don't give any reason, am I ever afterwards to hold my peace?'
asked Griggs, with a faint smile on his weather-beaten face. 'Are you
publishing the bans? or are we thinking of the same thing?'
'I suppose we are. Good-morning.'
She nodded gravely and passed on, gathering up her black skirt a
little, for there had been a shower. He stood still a moment before
the shop window and looked after her, gravely admiring her figure and
her walk, as he might have admired a very valuable thoroughbred. She
was wearing mourning for her husband, not because any one would have
blamed her if she had not done so, considering how he had treated her,
but out of natural self-respect.
Griggs also looked after her as she went away because he felt that she
was not quite pleased with him for having suggested that he and she
had both been thinking of the same thing.
The thought concerned a third person, and one who rarely allowed
himself to be overlooked; no less a man, in fact, than Mr. Rufus Van
Torp, the American potentate of the great Nickel Trust, who was Lady
Maud's most intimate friend, and who had long desired to make the
Primadonna his wife. He had bought a place adjoining Lord Creedmore's,
and there had lately been a good deal of quite groundless gossip about
him and Lady Maud, which had very nearly become a scandal. The truth
was that they were the best friends in the world, and nothing more;
the millionaire had for some time been interested in an unusual sort
of charity which almost filled the lonely woman's life, and he had
given considerable sums of money to help it. During the months
preceding the beginning of this tale, he had also been the object of
one of those dastardly attacks to which very rich and important
financiers are more exposed than other men, and he had actually been
accused of having done away with his partner's daughter, who had come
to her end mysteriously during a panic in a New York theatre. But, as
I have told elsewhere, his innocence had been proved in the clearest
possible manner, and he had returned to the United States to look
after the interests of the Trust.
When Griggs heard the news of Margaret's engagement to Logotheti, he
immediately began to wonder how Mr. Van Torp would receive the
intelligence; and if it had not already occurred to Lady Maud that the
millionaire might make a final effort to rout his rival and marry the
Primadonna himself, the old author's observation suggested such a
possibility. Van Torp was a man who had fought up to success and
fortune with little regard for the obstacles he found in his way; he
had worked as a cowboy in his early youth, and was apt to look on his
adversaries and rivals in life either as refractory cattle or as
dangerous wild beasts; and though he had some of the old-fashioned
ranchero's sense of fair-play in a fight, he had much of the reckless
daring and ruthless savagery that characterise the fast-disappearing
Western desperado.
Logotheti, on the other hand, was in many respects a true Oriental,
supremely astute and superlatively calm, but imbued, at heart, with a
truly Eastern contempt for any law that chanced to oppose his wish.
Both men had practically inexhaustible resources at their command, and
both were determined to marry the Primadonna. It occurred to Paul
Griggs that a real struggle between such a pair of adversaries would
be worth watching. There was unlimited money on both sides, and equal
courage and determination. The Greek was the more cunning of the two,
by great odds, and had now the considerable advantage of having been
accepted by the lady; but the American was far more regardless of
consequences to himself or to others in the pursuit of what he wanted,
and, short of committing a crime, would put at least as broad an
interpretation on the law. Logotheti had always lived in a highly
civilised society, even in Constantinople, for it is the greatest
mistake to imagine that the upper classes of Greeks, in Greece or
Turkey, are at all deficient in cultivation. Van Torp, on the
contrary, had run away from civilisation when a half-educated boy, he
had grown to manhood in a community of men who had little respect for
anything and feared nothing at all, and he had won success in a field
where those who compete for it buy it at any price, from a lie to a
life.
Lady Maud was thinking of these things as she disappeared from
Griggs's sight, and not at all of him. It might have surprised her to
know that his eyes had followed her with sincere admiration, and
perhaps she would have been pleased. There is a sort of admiration
which acknowledged beauties take for granted, and to which they attach
no value unless it is refused them; but there is another kind that
brings them rare delight when they receive it, for it is always given
spontaneously, whether it be the wondering exclamation of a street boy
who has never seen anything so beautiful in his life, or a quiet look
and a short phrase from an elderly man who has seen what is worth
seeing for thirty or forty years, and who has given up making
compliments.
The young widow was quite unconscious of Griggs's look and was very
busy with her thoughts, for she was a little afraid that she had made
trouble. Ten days had passed since she had last written to Rufus Van
Torp, and she had told him, amongst other things, that Madame da
Cordova and Logotheti were engaged to be married, adding that it
seemed to her one of the most ill-assorted matches of the season, and
that her friend the singer was sure to be miserable herself and to
make her husband perfectly wretched, though he was a very good sort
in his way and she liked him. There had been no reason why she should
not write the news to Mr. Van Torp, even though it was not public
property yet, for he was her intimate friend, and she knew him to be
as reticent as all doctors ought to be and as some solicitors' clerks
are. She had asked him not to tell any one till he heard of the
engagement from some one else.
He had not spoken of it, but something else had happened. He had
cabled to Lady Maud that he was coming back to England by the next
steamer. He often came out and went back suddenly two or three times
at short intervals, and then stayed away for many months, but Lady
Maud thought there could not be much doubt as to his reason for coming
now. She knew well enough that he had tried to persuade the Primadonna
to marry him during the previous winter, and that if his passion for
her had not shown itself much of late, this was due to other causes,
chiefly to the persecution of which he had rid himself just before he
went to America, but to some extent also to the fact that Margaret had
not seemed inclined to accept any one else.
Lady Maud, who knew the man better than he knew himself, inwardly
compared him to a volcano, quiescent just now, so far as Margaret was
concerned, but ready to break out at any moment with unexpected and
destructive energy.
Margaret herself, who had known Logotheti for years, and had seen him
in his most dangerous moods as well as in his very best moments, would
have thought a similar comparison with an elemental force quite as
truly descriptive of him, if it had occurred to her. The enterprising
Greek had really attempted to carry her off by force on the night of
the final rehearsal before her first appearance on the stage, and had
only been thwarted because a royal rival had caused him to be locked
up, as if by mistake, in order to carry her off himself; in which he
also had failed most ridiculously, thanks to the young singer's
friend, the celebrated Madame Bonanni. That was a very amusing story.
But on another occasion Margaret had found herself shut up with her
Oriental adorer in a room from which she could not escape, and he had
quite lost his head; and if she had not been the woman she was, she
would have fared ill. After that he had behaved more like an ordinary
human being, and she had allowed the natural attraction he had for her
to draw her gradually to a promise of marriage; and now she talked to
Lady Maud about her gown, but she still put off naming a day for the
wedding, in spite of Logotheti's growing impatience.
This was the situation when the London season broke up and Mr. Van
Torp landed at Southampton from an ocean greyhound that had covered
the distance from New York in five days twelve hours and thirty-seven
minutes, which will doubtless seem very slow travelling if any one
takes the trouble to read this tale twenty years hence, though the
passengers were pleased because it was not much under the record time
for steamers coming east.
Five hours after he landed Van Torp entered Lady Maud's drawing-room
in the little house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, where she had
lived with the departed Leven from the time when he had been attached
to the Russian Embassy till he had last gone away. She was giving it
up now, and it was already half dismantled. It was to see Van Torp
that she was in town in the middle of August, instead of with her
father at Craythew or with friends in Scotland.
London was as hot as it could be, which means that a New Yorker would
have found it chilly and an Italian delightfully cool; but the
Londoners were sweltering when Van Torp arrived, and were talking of
the oppressive atmosphere and the smell of the pavement, not at all
realising how blessed they were.
The American entered and stood still a moment to have a good look at
Lady Maud. He was a middle-sized, rather thick-set man, with rude
hands, sandy hair, an over-developed jaw, and sharp blue eyes, that
sometimes fixed themselves in a disagreeable way when he was
speaking--eyes that had looked into the barrel of another man's
revolver once or twice without wavering, hands that had caught and
saddled and bridled many an unridden colt in the plains, a mouth like
a carpet-bag when it opened, like a closed vice when it was shut. He
was not a handsome man, Mr. Rufus Van Torp, nor one with whom any one
short of a prize-fighter would meddle, nor one to haunt the dreams of
sweet sixteen. It was not for his face that Lady Maud, good and
beautiful, liked him better than any one in the world, except her own
father, and believed in him and trusted him, and it was assuredly not
for his money. The beggar did not live who would dare to ask him for a
penny after one look at his face, and there were not many men on
either side of the Atlantic who would have looked forward to any sort
of contest with him without grave misgivings.
'Well,' he said, advancing the last step after that momentary pause,
and taking the white hand in both his own, 'how have you been? Fair to
middling? About that? Well--I'm glad to see you, gladder than a
sitting hen at sunrise!'
Lady Maud laid her left hand affectionately on the man's right, which
was uppermost on hers, and her voice rippled with happiness.
'If you had only said a lark instead of a hen, Rufus!' she laughed.
'We could get along a great sight better without larks than without
hens,' answered her friend philosophically. 'But I'll make it a
nightingale next time, if I can remember, or a bald eagle, or any bird
that strikes you as cheerful.'
The terrible mouth had relaxed almost to gentleness, and the fierce
blue eyes were suddenly kind as they looked into the woman's face. She
led him to an old-fashioned sofa, their hands parted, and they sat
down side by side.
'Cheerful,' he said, in a tone of reflection. 'Yes, I'm feeling pretty
cheerful, and it's all over and settled.'
'Do you mean the trouble you were in last spring?'
'N--no--not that, though it wasn't as funny as a Sunday School treat
while it lasted, and I was thankful when it was through. It's another
matter altogether that I'm cheerful about--besides seeing you, my
dear. I've done it, Maud. I've done it at last.'
'What?'
'I've sold my interest in the Trust. It won't be made known for some
time, so don't talk about it, please. But it's settled and done, and
I've got the money.'
'You have sold the Nickel Trust?'
Lady Maud's lips remained parted in surprise.
'And I've bought you a little present with the proceeds,' he answered,
putting his large thumb and finger into the pocket of his white
waistcoat. 'It's only a funny little bit of glass I picked up,' he
continued, producing a small twist of stiff writing-paper. 'You
needn't think it's so very fine! But it's a pretty colour, and when
you're out of mourning I daresay you'll make a hat-pin of it. I like
handsome hat-pins myself, you know.'
He had untwisted the paper while speaking, it lay open in the palm of
his hand, and Lady Maud saw a stone of the size of an ordinary
hazel-nut, very perfectly cut, and of that wonderful transparent red
colour which is known as 'pigeon's blood,' and which it is almost
impossible to describe. Sunlight shining through Persian rose-leaf
sherbet upon white silk makes a little patch of colour that is perhaps
more like it than any other shade of red, but not many Europeans have
ever seen that, and it is a good deal easier to go and look at a
pigeon's blood ruby in a jeweller's window.
'What a beautiful colour!' exclaimed Lady Maud innocently, after a
moment. 'I didn't know they imitated rubies so well, though, of
course, I know nothing about it. If it were not an impossibility, I
should take it for a real one.'
'So should I,' assented Mr. Van Torp quietly. 'It'll make a pretty
hat-pin anyway. Shall I have it mounted for you?'
'Thanks, awfully, but I think I should like to keep it as it is for a
little while. It's such a lovely colour, just as it is. Thank you so
much! Do tell me where you got it.'
'Oh, well, there was a sort of a traveller came to New York the other
day selling them what they call privately. I guess he must be a
Russian or something, for he has a kind of an off-look of your
husband, only he wears a beard and an eyeglass. It must be about the
eyes. Maybe the forehead too. He'll most likely turn up in London one
of these days to sell this invention, or whatever it is.'
Lady Maud said nothing to this, but she took the stone from his hand,
looked at it some time with evident admiration, and then set it down
on its bit of paper, upon a little table by the end of the sofa.
'If I were you, I wouldn't leave it around much,' observed Mr. Van
Torp carelessly. 'Somebody might take a fancy to it. The colour's
attractive, you see, and it looks like real.'
'Oh, I'll be very careful of it, never fear! I can't tell you how much
I like it!' She twisted it up tightly in its bit of paper, rose to her
feet, and put it away in her writing-table.
'It'll be a sort of souvenir of the old Nickel Trust,' said her
friend, watching her with satisfaction.
'Have you really sold out all your interest in it?' she asked, sitting
down again; and now that she returned to the question her tone showed
that she had not yet recovered from her astonishment.
'That's what I've done. I always told you I would, when I was ready.
Why do you look so surprised? Would you rather I hadn't?'
Lady Maud shook her head and her voice rippled deliciously as she
answered.
'I can hardly imagine you without the Nickel Trust, that's all! What
in the world shall you do with yourself?'
'Oh, various kinds of things. I think I'll get married, for one. Then
I'll take a rest and sort of look around. Maybe something will turn
up. I've concluded to win the Derby next year--that's something
anyway.'
'Rather! Have you thought of anything else?'
She laughed a little, but was grave the next moment, for she knew him
much too well to believe that he had taken such a step out of caprice,
or a mere fancy for change; his announcement that he meant to marry
agreed too well with what she herself had suddenly foreseen when she
had parted with Griggs in Bond Street a few days earlier. If Margaret
had not at last made up her mind to accept Logotheti--supposing that
her decision was really final--Rufus Van Torp would not suddenly have
felt sure that he himself must marry her if she married at all. His
English friend could not have put into words what she felt had taken
place in his heart, but she understood him as no one else could, and
was certain that he had reached one of the great cross-roads of his
life.
A woman who has been married for years to such a man as Leven, and who
tries to do good to those fallen and cast-out ones who laugh and cry
and suffer out their lives, and are found dead behind the
Virtue-Curtain, is not ignorant of the human animal's instincts and
ways, and Lady Maud was not at all inclined to believe her friend a
Galahad. In the clean kingdom of her dreams men could be chaste, and
grown women could be as sweetly ignorant of harm as little children;
but when she opened her eyes and looked about her she saw, and she
understood, and did not shiver with delicate disgust, nor turn away
with prim disapproval, nor fancy that she would like to be a mediæval
nun and induce the beatific state by merciless mortification of the
body. She knew very well what the Virtue-Curtain was trying to hide;
she lifted it quietly, went behind it without fear, and did all she
could to help the unhappy ones she found there. She did not believe in
other people's theories at all, and had none herself; she did not even
put much faith in all the modern scientific talk about vicious
inheritance and degeneration; much more than half of the dwellers
behind the scenes had been lured there in ignorance, a good many had
been dragged there by force, a very considerable number had been
deliberately sold into slavery, and nine out of ten of them stayed
there because no one really tried to get them out. Perhaps no one who
did try was rich enough; for it is not to be expected that every human
sinner should learn in a day to prefer starving virtue to well-fed
vice, or, as Van Torp facetiously expressed it, a large capital locked
up in heavenly stocks to a handsome income accruing from the bonds of
sin. If Lady Maud succeeded, as she sometimes did, the good done was
partly due to the means he gave her for doing it.
'Come and be bad and you shall have a good time while you are young,'
the devil had said, assuming the appearance, dress, and manner of
fashion, without any particular regard for age.
'Give it up and I'll make you so comfortable that you'll really like
not being bad,' said Lady Maud, and the invitation was sometimes
accepted.
Evidently, a woman who occupied herself with this form of charity
could not help knowing and hearing a good deal about men which would
have surprised and even shocked her social sisters, and she was not in
danger of taking Rufus Van Torp for an ascetic in disguise.
On the contrary, she was quite able to understand that the tremendous
attraction the handsome singer had for him might be of the most
earthly kind, such as she herself would not care to call love, and
that, if she was right, it would not be partially dignified by any of
that true artistic appreciation which brought Logotheti such rare
delight, and disguised a passion not at all more ethereal than Van
Torp's might be. In refinement of taste, no comparison was possible
between the Western-bred millionaire and the cultivated Greek, who
knew every unfamiliar by-way and little hidden treasure of his
country's literature and art, besides very much of what other nations
had done and written. Yet Lady Maud, influenced, no doubt, by the
honest friendship of her American friend, believed that Van Torp would
be a better and more faithful husband, even to a primadonna, than his
Oriental rival.
Notwithstanding her opinion of him, however, she was not prepared for
his next move. He had noticed the grave look that had followed her
laughter, and he turned away and was silent for a few moments.
'The Derby's a side show,' he said at last. 'I've come over to get
married, and I want you to help me. Will you?'
'Can I?' asked Lady Maud, evasively.
'Yes, you can, and I believe there'll be trouble unless you do.'
'Who is she? Do I know her?' She was trying to put off the evil
moment.
'Oh, yes, you know her quite well. It's Madame Cordova.'
'But she's engaged to Monsieur Logotheti----'
'I don't care. I mean to marry her if she marries any one. He shan't
have her anyway.'
'But I cannot deliberately help you to break off her engagement! It's
impossible!'
'See here,' answered Mr. Van Torp. 'You know that Greek, and you know
me. Which of us will make the best husband for an English girl? That's
what Madame Cordova is, after all. I put it to you. If you were forced
to choose one of us yourself, which would you take? That's the way to
look at it.'
'But Miss Donne is not "forced" to take one of you----'
'She's going to be. It's the same. Besides, I said "if." Won't you
answer me?'
'She's in love with Monsieur Logotheti,' said Lady Maud, rather
desperately.
'Is she, now? I wonder. I don't much think so myself. He's clever and
he's obstinate, and he's just made her think she's in love, that's
all. Anyhow, that's not an answer to my question. Other things being
alike, if she had to choose, which of us would be the best husband for
her?--the better, I mean. You taught me to say "better," didn't you?'
Lady Maud tried to smile.
'Of two, yes,' she answered. 'You are forcing my hand, my dear
friend,' she went on very gravely. 'You know very well that I trust
you with all my heart. If it were possible to imagine a case in which
the safety of the world could depend on my choosing one of you for my
husband, you know very well that I should take you, though I never was
the least little bit in love with you, any more than you ever were
with me.'
'Well, but if you would, she ought,' argued Mr. Van Torp. 'It's for
her own good, and as you're a friend of hers, you ought to help her to
do what's good for her. That's only fair. If she doesn't marry me,
she's certain to marry that Greek, so it's a forced choice, it appears
to me.'
'But I can't----'
'She's a nice girl, isn't she?'
'Yes, very.'
'And you like her, don't you?'
'Very much. Her father was my father's best friend.'
'I don't believe in atavism,' observed the American, 'but that's
neither here nor there. You know what you wrote me. Do you believe
she'll be miserable with Logotheti or not?'
'I think she will,' Lady Maud answered truthfully. 'But I may be
wrong.'
'No; you're right. I know it. But marriage is a gamble anyway, as you
know better than any one. Are you equally sure that she would be
miserable with me? Dead sure, I mean.'
'No, I'm not sure. But that's not a reason----'
'It's a first-rate reason. I care for that lady, and I want her to be
happy, and as you admit that she will have a better chance of
happiness with me than with Logotheti, I'm going to marry her myself,
not only because I want to, but because it will be a long sight better
for her. See? No fault in that line of reasoning, is there?'
'So far as reasoning goes----' Lady Maud's tone was half an admission.
'That's all I wanted you to say,' interrupted the American. 'So that's
settled, and you're going to help me.'
'No,' answered Lady Maud quietly; 'I won't help you to break off that
engagement. But if it should come to nothing, without your
interfering--that is, by the girl's own free will and choice and
change of mind, I'd help you to marry her if I could.'
'But you admit that she's going to be miserable,' said Van Torp
stubbornly.
'I'm sorry for her, but it's none of my business. It's not honourable
to try and make trouble between engaged people, no matter how
ill-matched they may be.'
'Funny idea of honour,' observed the American, 'that you're bound to
let a friend of yours break her neck at the very gravel pit where you
were nearly smashed yourself! In the hunting field you'd grab her
bridle if she wouldn't listen to you, but in a matter of marriage--oh,
no! "It's dishonourable to interfere," "She's made her choice and she
must abide by it," and all that kind of stuff!'
Lady Maud's clear eyes met his angry blue ones calmly.
'I don't like you when you say such things,' she said, lowering her
voice a little.
'I didn't mean to be rude,' answered the millionaire, almost humbly.
'You see I don't always know. I learnt things differently from what
you did. I suppose you'd think it an insult if I said I'd give a large
sum of money to your charity the day I married Madame Cordova, if
you'd help me through.'
[Illustration: "'Funny idea of honour,' observed the American."]
'Please stop.' Lady Maud's face darkened visibly. 'That's not like
you.'
'I'll give a million pounds sterling,' said Mr. Van Torp slowly.
Lady Maud leaned back in her corner of the sofa, clasping her hands
rather tightly together in her lap. Her white throat flushed as when
the light of dawn kisses Parian marble, and the fresh tint in her
cheeks deepened softly; her lips were tightly shut, her eyelids
quivered a little, and she looked straight before her across the room.
'You can do a pretty good deal with a million pounds,' said Mr. Van
Torp, after the silence had lasted nearly half a minute.
'Don't!' cried Lady Maud, in an odd voice.
'Forty thousand pounds a year,' observed the millionaire thoughtfully.
'You could do quite a great deal of good with that, couldn't you?'
'Don't! Please don't!'
She pressed her hands to her ears and rose at the same instant.
Perhaps it was she, after all, and not her friend who had been brought
suddenly to a great cross-road in life. She stood still one moment by
the sofa without looking down at her companion; then she left the room
abruptly, and shut the door behind her.
Van Torp got up from his seat slowly when she was gone, and went to
the window, softly blowing a queer tune between his closed teeth and
his open lips, without quite whistling.
'Well----' he said aloud, in a tone of doubt, after a minute or two.
But he said no more, for he was much too reticent and sensible a
person to talk to himself audibly even when he was alone, and much too
cautious to be sure that a servant might not be within hearing, though
the door was shut. He stood before the window nearly a quarter of an
hour, thinking that Lady Maud might come back, but as no sound of any
step broke the silence he understood that he was not to see her again
that day, and he quietly let himself out of the house and went off,
not altogether discontented with the extraordinary impression he had
made.
Lady Maud sat alone upstairs, so absorbed in her thoughts that she did
not hear the click of the lock as he opened and shut the front door.
She was much more amazed at herself than surprised by the offer he had
made. Temptation, in any reasonable sense of the word, had passed by
her in life, and she had never before understood what it could mean to
her. Indeed, she had thought of herself very little of late, and had
never had the least taste for self-examination or the analysis of her
conscience. She had done much good, because she wanted to do it, and
not at all as a duty, or with that idea of surprising the Deity by the
amount of her good works, which actuates many excellent persons. As
for doing anything seriously wrong, she had never wanted to, and it
had not even occurred to her that the opportunity for a wicked deed
could ever present itself to her together with the slightest desire to
do it. Her labours had taken her to strange places, and she knew what
real sin was, and even crime, and the most hideous vice, and its still
more awful consequences; but one reason why she had wrought fearlessly
was that she felt herself naturally invulnerable. She knew a good many
people in her own set whom she thought quite as bad as the worst she
had ever picked up on the dark side of the Virtue-Curtain; they were
people who seemed to have no moral sense, men who betrayed their wives
wantonly, young women who took money for themselves and old ones who
cheated at bridge, men who would deliberately ruin a rival in
politics, in finance, or in love, and ambitious women who had driven
their competitors to despair and destruction by a scientific use of
calumny. But she had never felt any inclination towards any of those
things, which all seemed to her disgusting, or cowardly, or otherwise
abominable. Her husband had gone astray after strange gods--and
goddesses--but she had never wished to be revenged on them, or him,
nor to say what was not true about any one, nor even what was true and
could hurt, nor to win a few sovereigns at cards otherwise than
fairly, nor to wish anybody dead who had a right to live.
She was eight-and-twenty years of age and a widow, when temptation
came to her suddenly in a shape of tremendous strength, through her
trusted friend, who had helped her for years to help others. It was
real temptation. The man who offered her a million pounds to save
miserable wretches from a life of unspeakable horror, could offer her
twice as much, four, five, or ten millions perhaps. No one knew the
vast extent of his wealth, and in an age of colossal fortunes she had
often heard his spoken of with the half-dozen greatest.
The worst of it was that she felt able to do what he asked; for she
was inwardly convinced that the great singer did not know her own mind
and was not profoundly attached to the man she had accepted. Of the
two women, Margaret was by far the weaker character; or, to be just,
the whole strength of her nature had long been concentrated in the
struggle for artistic supremacy, and could not easily be brought to
exert itself in other directions. Lady Maud's influence over her was
great, and Logotheti's had never been very strong. She was taken by
his vitality, his daring, his constancy, or obstinacy, and a little by
his good looks, as a mere girl might be, because the theatre had made
looks seem so important to her. But apart from his handsome face,
Logotheti was no match for Van Torp. Of that Lady Maud was sure.
Besides, the Primadonna's antipathy for the American had greatly
diminished of late, and had perhaps altogether given place to a
friendly feeling. She had said openly that she had misjudged him,
because he had pestered her with his attentions in New York, and that
she even liked him since he had shown more tact. Uncouth as he was in
some ways, Lady Maud knew that she herself might care for him more
than as a friend, if her heart were not buried for ever in a soldier's
grave on the Veldt.
That was the worst of it. She felt that it was probably not beyond her
power to bring about what Van Torp desired, at least so far as to
induce Margaret to break off the engagement which now blocked his way.
Under cover of roughness, too, he had argued with a subtlety that
frightened her now that she was alone; and with a consummate knowledge
of her nature he had offered her the only sort of bribe that could
possibly tempt her, the means to make permanent the good work she had
already carried so far.
He had placed her in such a dilemma as she had never dreamed of. To
accept such an offer as he made, would mean that she must do something
which she felt was dishonourable, if she gave 'honour' the meaning an
honest gentleman attaches to it, and that was the one she had learned
from her father, and which a good many women seem unable to
understand. To refuse, was to deprive hundreds of wretched and
suffering creatures of the only means of obtaining a hold on a decent
existence which Lady Maud had ever found to be at all efficacious. She
knew that she had not done much, compared with what was undone; it
looked almost nothing. But where law-making had failed altogether,
where religion was struggling bravely but almost in vain, where
enlightened philanthropy found itself paralysed and bankrupt, she had
accomplished something by merely using a little money in the right
way.
'You can do quite a great deal of good with forty thousand pounds a
year.'
Van Torp's rough-hewn speech rang through her head, and somehow its
reckless grammar gave it strength and made it stick in her memory,
word for word. In the drawer of the writing-table before which she was
sitting there was a little file of letters that meant more to her than
anything else in the world, except one dear memory. They were all from
women, they all told much the same little story, and it was good to
read. She had made many failures, and some terrible ones, which she
could never forget; but there were real successes, too, there were
over a dozen of them now, and she had only been at work for three
years. If she had more money, she could do more; if she had much, she
could do much; and she knew of one or two women who could help her.
What might she not accomplish in a lifetime with the vast sum her
friend offered her!--the price of hindering a marriage that was almost
sure to turn out badly, perhaps as badly as her own!--the money value
of a compromise with her conscience on a point of honour which many
women would have thought very vague indeed, if not quite absurd in
such a case. She knew what temptation meant, now, and she was to know
even better before long. The Primadonna had said that she was going to
marry Logotheti chiefly because he insisted on it.
The duel for Margaret's hand had begun; Van Torp had aimed a blow that
might well give him the advantage if it went home; and Logotheti
himself was quite unaware of the skilful attack that threatened his
happiness.