In the sanctuary of Wagnerians the famous lyric Diva was a somewhat
less important personage than in any of those other places which are
called 'musical centres.' Before the glories of the great Brunhilde,
or the supreme Kundry of the day, the fame of the 'nightingale
soprano' paled a little, at least in the eyes of more than half the
people who filled the Bayreuth theatre. But she did not pass unnoticed
by any means. There were distinguished conductors of Wagner's music
who led the orchestra for other operas too; there were Kundrys and
Brunhildes who condescended to be Toscas sometimes, as a pure matter
of business and livelihood, and there were numberless people in the
audience who preferred _Cavalleria Rusticana_ to the _Meistersinger_
or the _Götterdämmerung_, but would not dare to say so till they were
at a safe distance; and all these admired the celebrated Cordova,
except the few that were envious of her, and who were not many.
Indeed, for once it was the other way. When Margaret had come back to
her own room after hearing _Parsifal_ the first time, she had sat down
and hidden her face in her hands for a few moments, asking herself
what all her parts were worth in the end compared with Kundry, and
what comparison was possible between the most beautiful of Italian or
French operas and that one immortal masterpiece; for she thought, and
rightly perhaps, that all the rest of Wagner's work had been but a
preparation for that, and that _Parsifal_, and _Parsifal_ alone, had
set the genius of music beside the genius of poetry, an equal, at
last, upon a throne as high. On that night the sound of her own voice
would have given her no pleasure, for she longed for another tone in
it; if by some impossible circumstance she had been engaged to sing as
Juliet that night, she would have broken down and burst into tears.
She knew it, and the knowledge made her angry with herself, yet for
nothing she could think of would she have foregone the second hearing
of _Parsifal_, and the third after that; for she was a musician first,
and then a great singer, and, like all true musicians, she was swayed
by music that touched her, and never merely pleased by it. For her no
intermediate condition of the musical sense was possible between
criticism and delight; but beyond that she had found rapture now, and
ever afterwards she would long to feel it again. Whether, if her voice
had made it possible to sing the part of Kundry, she could have lifted
herself to that seventh heaven by her own singing, only the great
Kundrys and Parsifals can tell. In lyric opera she knew the keen joy
of being both the instrument and the enthralled listener; perhaps a
still higher state beyond that was out of any one's reach, but she
could at least dream of it.
She took Van Torp with her to the performance the next day, after
impressing upon him that he was not to speak, not to whisper, not to
applaud, not to make any sound, from the moment he entered the theatre
till he left it for the dinner interval. He was far too happy with her
to question anything she said, and he obeyed her most scrupulously.
Twenty-four hours earlier she would have laughed at the idea that his
presence beside her at such a time could be not only bearable, but
sympathetic, yet that seemed natural now. The Diva and the ex-cowboy,
the accomplished musician and the Californian miner, the sensitive,
gifted, capricious woman and the iron-jawed money-wolf had found that
they had something in common. Wagner's last music affected them in the
same way.
Such things are not to be explained, and could not be believed if they
did not happen again and again before the eyes of those who know how
to see, which is quite a different thing from merely seeing.
Margaret's sudden liking for the man she had once so thoroughly
disliked had begun when he had whistled to her. It grew while he sat
beside her in the darkened theatre. She was absorbed by the music, the
action, and the scene, and at this second hearing she could follow the
noble poem itself; but she was subconscious of what her neighbour
felt. He was not so motionless merely because she had told him that he
must sit very still; he was not so intent on what he heard and saw,
merely to please her; it was not mere interest that held him, still
less was it curiosity. The spell was upon him; he was entranced, and
Margaret knew it.
Even when they left the theatre and drove back to the hotel, he was
silent, and she was the first to speak. Margaret hated the noise and
confusion of the restaurant near the Festival Theatre.
'You have enjoyed it,' she said. 'I'm glad I brought you.'
'I've felt something I don't understand,' Van Torp answered gravely.
She liked the reply for its simplicity. She had perhaps expected that
he would summon up his most picturesque language to tell her how much
pleasure the music had given him, or that he would perhaps laugh at
himself for having been moved; but instead, he only told her that he
did not understand what he had felt; and they walked on without
another word.
'Go and get something to eat,' she said when they reached the hotel,
'and I'll meet you here in half an hour. I don't care to talk either.'
He only nodded, and lifted his hat as she went up the steps; but
instead of going to eat, he sat down on a bench outside, and waited
for her there, reflecting on the nature of his new experience.
Like most successful men, he looked on all theories as trash, good
enough to amuse clever idlers, but never to be taken into
consideration in real life. He never asked about the principle on
which any invention was founded; his first and only question was,
'Will it work?'
Considering himself as the raw material, and the theatre he had just
left as the mill, he was forced to admit that _Parsifal_ 'worked.'
'It works all right,' he inwardly soliloquised. 'If that's what it
claims to do, it does it.'
When he had reached this business-like conclusion, his large lips
parted a little, and as his breath passed between his closed teeth, it
made soft little hissing sounds that had a suggestion of music in
them, though they were not really whistled notes; his sandy lashes
half veiled his eyes and he saw again what he had lately seen: the
King borne down to the bath that would never heal his wound, and the
dead swan, and the wondering Maiden-Man brought to answer for his
bow-shot, the wild Witch-Girl crouching by the giant trees, and the
long way that led upward through the forest, and upward ever, to the
Hall of the Knights, and last of all, the mysterious Sangreal itself,
glowing divinely in the midst.
He did not really understand what he had seen and saw again as he half
closed his eyes. That was the reason why he accepted it passively, as
he accepted elemental things. If he could by any means have told
himself what illusion it was all intended to produce upon his sight
and hearing, he would have pulled the trick to pieces, mentally, in a
moment, and what remained would have been the merely pleasant
recollection of something very well done, but not in itself different
from other operas or plays he had heard and seen elsewhere, nothing
more than an 'improvement on _Lohengrin_,' as he would probably have
called it.
But this was something not 'more,' but quite of another kind, and it
affected him as the play of nature's forces sometimes did; it was
like the brooding of the sea, the rising gale, the fury of the storm,
like the leaden stillness before the earthquake, the awful heave of
the earth, the stupendous crash of the doomed city, the long rolling
rumble of falling walls and tumbling houses, big with sudden death; or
again, it was like sad gleams of autumn sunshine, and the cold
cathedral light of primeval forests in winter, and then it was the
spring stirring in all things, the rising pulse of mating nature, the
burst of May-bloom, the huge glow of the earth basking in the full
summer sun.
He did not know, and no one knew, what nature meant by those things.
How could nature's meaning be put into words? And so he did not
understand what he had felt, nor could he see that it might have
significance. What was the 'interpretation' of a storm, of an
earthquake, or of winter and summer? God, perhaps; perhaps just
'nature.' He did not know. Margaret had told him the story of the
opera in the evening; he had followed it easily enough and could not
forget it. It was a sort of religious fairy-tale, he thought, and he
was ready to believe that Wagner had made a good poem of it, even a
great poem. But it was not the story that could be told, which had
moved him; it was nothing so easily defined as a poem, or a drama, or
a piece of music. A far more cultivated man than he could ever become
might sit through the performance and feel little or nothing, of that
he was sure; just as he could have carried beautiful Lady Maud in his
arms without feeling that she was a woman for him, whereas the
slightest touch of Margaret Donne, the mere fact of being near her,
made the blood beat in his throat.
That was only a way of putting it, for there was no sex in the music
he had just heard. He had sat so close to Margaret that their arms
constantly touched, yet he had forgotten that she was there. If the
music had been _Tristan and Isolde_ he could not have been unaware of
her, for a moment, for that is the supreme sex-music of Wagner's art.
But this was different, altogether different, though it was even
stronger than that.
He forgot to look at his watch. Margaret came out of the hotel,
expecting to find him waiting for her within the hall, and prepared to
be annoyed with him for taking so long over a meal. She stood on the
step and looked about, and saw him sitting on the bench at a little
distance. He raised his eyes as she came towards him and then rose
quickly.
'Is it time?' he asked.
'Yes,' she said. 'Did you get anything decent to eat?'
'Yes,' he answered vaguely. 'That is, now I think of it, I forgot
about dinner. It doesn't matter.'
She looked at his hard face curiously and saw a dead blank, the blank
that had sometimes frightened her by its possibilities, when the eyes
alone came suddenly to life.
'Won't you go in and get a biscuit, or a sandwich?' she asked after a
moment.
'Oh, no, thanks. I'm used to skipping meals when I'm interested in
things. Let's go, if you're ready.'
'I believe you are one of nature's Wagnerites,' Margaret said, as
they drove up the hill again, and she smiled at the idea.
'Well,' he answered slowly, 'there's one thing, if you don't mind my
telling you. It's rather personal. Perhaps I'd better not.'
The Primadonna was silent for a few moments, and did not look at him.
'Tell me,' she said suddenly.
'It's this. I don't know how long the performance lasted, but while it
was going on I forgot you were close beside me. You might just as well
not have been there. It's the first time since I ever knew you that
I've been near you without thinking about you all the time, and I
hadn't realised it till I was sitting here by myself. I hope you don't
mind my telling you?'
'It only makes me more glad that I brought you,' Margaret said
quietly.
'Thank you,' he answered; but he was quite sure that the same thing
could not happen again during the Second Part.
Nevertheless, it happened. For a little while, they were man and
woman, sitting side by side and very near, two in a silent multitude
of other men and women; but before long he was quite motionless, his
eyes were fixed again and he had forgotten her. She saw it and
wondered, for she knew how her presence moved him, and as his hands
lay folded on his knee, a mischievous girlish impulse almost made her,
the great artist, forget that she was listening to the greatest music
in the world and nearly made her lay her hand on his, just to see
what he would do. She was ashamed of it, and a little disgusted with
herself. The part of her that was Margaret Donne felt the disgust; the
part that was Cordova felt the shame, and each side of her nature was
restrained at a critical moment. Yet when the 'Good Friday' music
began, she was thinking of Van Torp and he was unconscious of her
presence.
It could not last, and soon she, too, was taken up into the artificial
paradise of the master-musician and borne along in the gale of golden
wings, and there was no passing of time till the very end; and the
people rose in silence and went out under the summer stars; and all
those whom nature had gifted to hear rightly, took with them memories
that years would scarcely dim.
The two walked slowly back to the town as the crowd scattered on foot
and in carriages. It was warm, and there was no moon, and one could
smell the dust, for many people were moving in the same direction,
though some stopped at almost every house and went in, and most of
them were beginning to talk in quiet tones.
Margaret stepped aside from the road and entered a narrow lane, and
Van Torp followed her in silence.
'This leads out to the fields,' she said. 'I must breathe the fresh
air. Do you mind?'
'On the contrary.'
[Illustration: "She was aware of his slight change of position without
turning her eyes."]
He said nothing more, and she did not speak, but walked on without
haste, dilating her nostrils to the sweet smell of grass that reached
her already. In a little while they had left the houses behind them,
and they came to a gate that led into a field.
Van Torp was going to undo the fastening, for there was no lock.
'No,' she said, 'we won't go through. I love to lean on a gate.'
She rested her crossed arms on the upper rail and Van Torp did the
same, careful that his elbow should not touch hers, and they both
stared into the dim, sweet-scented meadow. He felt her presence now
and it almost hurt him; he could hear his slow pulse in his ears, hard
and regular. She did not speak, but the night was so still that he
could hear her breathing, and at last he could not bear the warm
silence any longer.
'What are you thinking about?' he asked, trying to speak lightly.
She waited, or hesitated, before she answered him.
'You,' she said, after a time.
He moved involuntarily, and then drew a little further away from her,
as he might have withdrawn a foot from the edge of a precipice, out of
common caution. She was aware of his slight change of position without
turning her eyes.
'What made you say what you did to Mrs. Rushmore yesterday afternoon?'
she asked.
'About you?'
'Yes.'
'She asked me, point-blank, what I thought of Logotheti,' Van Torp
answered. 'I told her that I couldn't give her an unbiassed opinion of
the man you meant to marry, because I had always hoped to marry you
myself.'
'Oh--was that the way it happened?'
'Mrs. Rushmore could hardly have misunderstood me,' said Van Torp,
gathering the reins of himself, so to say, for anything that might
happen.
'No. But it sounds differently when you say it yourself.'
'That was just what I said, anyhow,' answered Van Torp. 'I didn't
think she'd go and tell you right away, but since she has, I don't
regret having said that much.'
'It was straightforward, at all events--if it was all true!' There was
the faintest laugh in her tone as she spoke the last words.
'It's true, right enough, though I didn't expect that I should be
talking to you about this sort of thing to-night.'
'The effect on Mrs. Rushmore was extraordinary, positively
fulminating,' Margaret said more lightly. 'She says I ought to break
off my engagement at once, and marry you! Fancy!'
'That's very kind of her, I'm sure,' observed Mr. Van Torp.
'I don't think so. I like it less and less, the more I think of it.'
'Well, I'm sorry, but I suppose it's natural, since you've concluded
to marry him, and it can't be helped. I wasn't going to say anything
against him, and I wouldn't say anything for him, so there was nothing
to do but to explain, which I did. I'm sorry you think I did wrong,
but I should give the same answer again.'
'Mrs. Rushmore thinks that Konstantin is a designing foreigner because
he's a Greek man of business, and that you are perfection because you
are an American business man.'
'If I'm perfection, that's not the real reason,' said Van Torp,
snatching at his first chance to steer out of the serious current; but
Margaret did not laugh.
'You are not perfection, nor I either,' she answered gravely. 'You are
famous in your way, and people call me celebrated in mine; but so far
as the rest is concerned we are just two ordinary human beings, and if
we are going to be friends we must understand each other from the
first, as far as we can.'
'I'll try to do my share,' said Van Torp, taking her tone.
'Very well. I'll do mine. I began by thinking you were amusing, when I
first met you. Then you frightened me last winter, and I hated you.
Not only that, I loathed you--there's no word strong enough for what I
felt. When I saw you in the audience, you almost paralysed my voice.'
'I didn't know it had been as bad as that,' said Mr. Van Torp quietly.
'Yes. It was worse than I can make you understand. And last spring,
when you were in so much trouble, I believed every word that was said
against you, even that you had murdered your partner's daughter in
cold blood to get rid of her, though that looked as incredible to
sensible people as it really was. It was only when I saw how Lady Maud
believed in you that I began to waver, and then I understood.'
'I'm glad you did.'
'So am I. But she is such a good woman herself that nobody can be
really bad in whom she believes. And now I'm changed still more. I
like you, and I'm sure that we shall be friends, if you will make me
one promise and keep it.'
'What is it?'
'That you will give up all idea of ever marrying me, no matter what
happens, even if I broke----'
'It's no use to go on,' interrupted Van Torp, 'for I can't promise
anything like that. Maybe you don't realise what you're asking, but
it's the impossible. That's all.'
'Oh, nonsense!' Margaret tried to laugh lightly, but it was a failure.
'No, it's very far from nonsense,' he replied, almost sternly. 'Since
you've spoken first, I'm going to tell you several things. One is,
that I accepted the syndicate's offer for the Nickel Trust so as to be
free to take any chance that might turn up. It had been open some
time, but I accepted it on the day I heard of your engagement. That's
a big thing. Another is, that I played a regular trick on Logotheti so
as to come and see you here. I deliberately asked him to dine with me
last night in London. I went right home, wrote a note to him,
antedated for yesterday afternoon, to put him off, and I left it to be
sent at the right hour. Then I drove to the station, and here I am.
You may call that pretty sharp practice, but I believe all's fair in
love and war, and I want you to understand that I think so. There's
one thing more. I won't give up the hope of making you marry me while
you're alive and I am, not if you're an old woman, and I'll put up all
I have in the game, including my own life and other people's, if it
comes to that. Amen.'
Margaret bent her head a little and was silent.
'Now you know why I won't promise what you asked,' said Van Torp in
conclusion.
He had not raised his voice; he had not laid a heavy stress on half
his words, as he often did in common conversation; there had been
nothing dramatic in his tone; but Margaret had understood well enough
that it was the plain statement of a man who meant to succeed, and
whose strength and resources were far beyond those of ordinary
suitors. She was not exactly frightened; indeed, since her dislike for
him had melted away, it was impossible not to feel a womanly
satisfaction in the magnitude of her conquest; but she also felt
instinctively that serious trouble and danger were not far off.
'You have no right to speak like that,' she said rather weakly, after
a moment.
'Perhaps not. I don't know. But I consider that you have a right to
know the truth, and that's enough for me. It's not as if I'd made up
my mind to steal your ewe-lamb from you and put myself in its place.
Logotheti is not any sort of a ewe-lamb. He's a man, he's got plenty
of strength and determination, he's got plenty of money--even what I
choose to call plenty. He says he cares for you. All right. So do I.
He says he'll marry you. I say that I will. All right again. You're
the prize put up for the best of two fighting men. You're not the
first woman in history who's been fought for, but, by all that's holy,
there never was one better worth it, not Helen of Troy herself!'
The last few words came with a sort of stormy rush, and he turned
round suddenly, and stood with his back against the gate, thrusting
his hands deep into his coat-pockets, perhaps with the idea of keeping
them quiet; but he did not come any nearer to her, and she felt she
was perfectly safe, and that a much deeper and more lasting power had
hold of him than any mere passionate longing to take her in his arms
and press his iron lips on hers against her will. She began to
understand why he was what he was, at an age when many successful men
are still fighting for final success. He was a crown-grasper, like
John the Smith. Beside him Logotheti was but a gifted favourite of
fortune. He spoke of Helen, but if he was comparing his rival with
Paris he himself was more like an Ajax than like good King Menelaus.
Margaret was not angry; she was hardly displeased, but she was really
at a loss what to say, and she said the first sensible thing that
suggested itself and that was approximately true.
'I'm sorry you have told me all this. We might have spent these next
two days very pleasantly together. Oh, I'm not pretending what I don't
feel! It's impossible for a woman like me, who can still be free, not
to be flattered when such a man as you cares for her in earnest, and
says the things you have. But, on the other hand, I'm engaged to be
married to another man, and it would not be loyal of me to let you
make love to me.'
'I don't mean to,' said Van Torp stoutly. 'It won't be necessary. If I
never spoke again you wouldn't forget what I've told you--ever! Why
should I say it again? I don't want to, until you can say as much to
me. If it's time to go, hitch the lead to my collar and take me home!
I'll follow you as quietly as a spaniel, anywhere!'
'And what would happen if I told you not to follow me, but to go home
and lie down in your kennel?' She laughed low as she moved away from
the gate.
'I'm not sure,' answered Van Torp. 'Don't.'
The last word was not spoken at all with an accent of warning, but it
was not said in a begging tone either. Margaret's short laugh followed
it instantly. He took the cue she offered, and went on speaking in his
ordinary manner.
'I'm not a bad dog if you don't bully me, and if you feed me at
regular hours and take me for a walk now and then. I don't pretend I'm
cut out for a French pet, because I'm not. I'm too big for a lap-dog,
and too fond of sport for the drawing-room, I suppose. A good useful
dog generally is, isn't he? Maybe I'm a little quarrelsome with other
dogs, but then, they needn't come bothering around!'
Margaret was amused, or pretended to be, but she was also thinking
very seriously of the future, and asking herself whether she ought to
send for Logotheti at once, or not. Van Torp would certainly not
leave Bayreuth at a moment's notice, at her bidding, and if he stayed
she could not now refuse to see him, with any show of justice. She
thought of a compromise, and suddenly stood still in the lane.
'You said just now that you would not say over again any of those
things you have told me to-night. Do you mean that?'
'Yes, I mean it.'
'Then please promise that you won't. That's all I ask if you are going
to spend the next two days here, and if I am to let you see me.'
'I promise,' Van Torp answered, without hesitation.
She allowed herself the illusion that she had both done the right
thing and also taken the position of command; and he, standing beside
her, allowed himself to smile at the futility of what she was
requiring of him with so much earnestness, for little as he knew of
women's ways he was more than sure that the words he had spoken that
night would come back to her again and again; and more than that he
could not hope at present. But she could not see his face clearly.
'Thank you,' she said. 'That shall be our compact.'
To his surprise, she held out her hand. He took it with wonderful
calmness, considering what the touch meant to him, and he returned
discreetly what was meant for a friendly pressure. She was so well
satisfied now that she did not think it necessary to telegraph to
Logotheti that he might start at once, though even if she had done so
immediately he could hardly have reached Bayreuth till the afternoon
of the next day but one, when the last performance of _Parsifal_ would
be already going on; and she herself intended to leave on the morning
after that.
She walked forward in silence for a few moments, and the lights of the
town grew quickly brighter.
'You will come in and have some supper with us, of course,' she said
presently.
'Why, certainly, since you're so kind,' answered Van Torp.
'I feel responsible for your having forgotten to dine,' she laughed.
'I must make it up to you. By this time Mrs. Rushmore is probably
wondering where I am.'
'Well,' said the American, 'if she thinks I'm perfection, she knows
that you're safe with me, I suppose, even if you do come home a little
late.'
'I shall say that we walked home very slowly, in order to breathe the
air.'
'Yes. We've walked home very slowly.'
'I mean,' said Margaret quickly, 'that I shall not say we have been
out towards the fields, as far as the gate.'
'I don't see any harm if we have,' observed Mr Van Torp indifferently.
'Harm? No! Don't you understand? Mrs. Rushmore is quite capable of
thinking that I have already--how shall I say?----' she stopped.
'Taken note of her good advice,' he said, completing the sentence for
her.
'Exactly! Whereas nothing could be further from my intention, as you
know. I'm very fond of Mrs. Rushmore,' Margaret continued quickly, in
order to get away from the dangerous subject she had felt obliged to
approach; 'she has been a mother to me, and heaven knows I needed one,
and she has the best and kindest heart in the world. But she is so
anxious for my happiness that, whenever she thinks it is at stake, she
rushes at conclusions without the slightest reason, and then it's very
hard to get them out of her dear old head!'
'I see. If that's why she thinks me perfection, I'll try not to
disappoint her.'
They reached the hotel, went upstairs, and separated on the landing to
get ready for supper. Margaret went to her own room, and before
joining Mrs. Rushmore she wrote a message to Alphonsine, her theatre
maid, who was visiting her family in Alsatia. Margaret generally
telegraphed her instructions, because it was much less trouble than to
write. She inquired whether Alphonsine would be ready to join her in
Paris on a certain day, and she asked for the address of a wig-maker
which she had forgotten.
On his side of the landing, Mr. Van Torp found Stemp waiting to dress
him, and the valet handed him a telegram. It was from Captain Brown,
and had been re-telegraphed from London.
'Anchored off Saint Mark's Square to-day, 3.30 P.M. Quick passage. No
stop. Coaling to-morrow. Ready for sea next morning.'
Mr. Van Torp laid the message open on the table in order to save
Stemp the trouble of looking for it afterwards.
'Stemp,' he asked, as he threw off his coat and kicked off his dusty
shoes, 'were you ever sea-sick?'
'Yes, sir,' answered the admirable valet, but he offered no more
information on the subject.
During the silence that followed, neither wasted a second. It is no
joke to wash and get into evening dress in six minutes, even with the
help of a body-servant trained to do his work at high speed.
'I mean,' said Van Torp, when he was already fastening his collar,
'are you sea-sick nowadays?'
'No, sir,' replied Stemp, in precisely the same tone as before.
'I don't mean on a twenty-thousand-ton liner. Black cravat. Yes. I
mean on a yacht. Fix it behind. Right. Would you be sea-sick on a
steam yacht?'
'No, sir.'
'Sure?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then I'll take you. Tuxedo.'
'Thank you, sir.'
Stemp held up the dinner-jacket; Mr. Van Torp's solid arms slipped
into the sleeves, he shook his sturdy shoulders, and pulled the jacket
down in front while the valet 'settled' the back. Then he faced round
suddenly, like a soldier at drill.
'All right?' he inquired.
Stemp looked him over carefully from head to foot in the glare of the
electric light.
'Yes, sir.'
Van Torp left the room at once. He found Mrs. Rushmore slowly moving
about the supper-table, more imposing than ever in a perfectly new
black tea-gown and an extremely smart widow's cap. Mr. Van Torp
thought she was a very fine old lady indeed. Margaret had not entered
yet; a waiter with smooth yellow hair stood by a portable sideboard on
which there were covered dishes. There were poppies and corn-flowers
in a plain white jar on the table. Mrs. Rushmore smiled at the
financier; it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that she beamed
upon him. They had not met alone since his first visit on the previous
afternoon.
'Miss Donne is a little late,' she said, as if the fact were very
pleasing. 'You brought her back, of course.'
'Why, certainly,' said Mr. Van Torp with an amiable smile.
'You can hardly have come straight from the theatre,' continued the
lady, 'for I heard the other people in the hotel coming in fully
twenty minutes before you did.'
'We walked home very slowly,' said Mr. Van Torp, still smiling
amiably.
'Ah, I see! You went for a little walk to get some air!' She seemed
delighted.
'We walked home very slowly in order to breathe the air,' said Mr. Van
Torp--'to breathe the air, as you say. I have to thank you very much
for giving me your seat, Mrs. Rushmore.'
'To tell the truth,' replied the good lady, 'I was very glad to let
you take my place. I cannot say I enjoy that sort of music myself. It
gives me a headache.'
Margaret entered at this point in a marvellous 'creation' of Chinese
crape, of the most delicate shade of heliotrope. Her dressmaker called
it also a tea-gown, but Mr. Van Torp would have thought it 'quite
appropriate' for a 'dinner-dance' at Bar Harbor.
'My dear child,' said Mrs. Rushmore, 'how long you were in getting
back from the theatre! I began to fear that something had happened!'
'We walked home very slowly,' said Margaret, with a pleasant smile.
'Ah? You went for a little walk to get some air?'
'We just walked home very slowly, in order to breathe the air,'
Margaret answered innocently.
It dawned on Mr. Van Torp that the dignified Mrs. Rushmore was not
quite devoid of a sense of humour. It also occurred to him that her
repetition of the question to Margaret, and the latter's answer, must
have revealed to her the fact that the two had agreed upon what they
should say, since they used identically the same words, and that they
therefore had an understanding about something they preferred to
conceal from her. Nothing could have given Mrs. Rushmore such profound
satisfaction as this, and it revealed itself in her bright smiles and
her anxiety that both Margaret and Van Torp should, if possible,
over-eat themselves with the excellent things she had been at pains to
provide for them and for herself. For she was something of an epicure
and her dinners in Versailles were of good fame, even in Paris.
Great appetites are generally silent, like the sincerest affections.
Margaret was very hungry, and Mr. Van Torp was both hungry and very
much in love. Mrs. Rushmore was neither, and she talked pleasantly
while tasting each delicacy with critical satisfaction.
'By the bye,' she said at last, when she saw that the millionaire was
backing his foretopsail to come to anchor, as Captain Brown might have
expressed it, 'I hope you have not had any further trouble about your
rooms, Mr. Van Torp.'
'None at all, that I know of,' answered the latter. 'My man told me
nothing.'
'The Russian prince arrived this evening while you were at the
theatre, and threatened the director with all sorts of legal
consequences because the rooms he had ordered were occupied. He turns
out to be only a count after all.'
'You don't say so,' observed Mr. Van Torp, in an encouraging tone.
'What became of him?' Margaret asked, without much interest.
'Did Potts not tell you, my dear? Why, Justine assisted at the whole
interview and came and told me at once.'
Justine was Mrs. Rushmore's Parisian maid, who always knew everything.
'What happened?' inquired Margaret, still not much interested.
'He arrived in an automobile,' answered Mrs. Rushmore, and she paused.
'What old Griggs calls a sudden-death-cart,' Mr. Van Torp put in.
'What a shocking name for it!' cried Mrs. Rushmore. 'And you are
always in them, my dear child!' She looked at Margaret. 'A
sudden-death-cart! It quite makes me shiver.'
'Griggs says that all his friends either kill or get killed in them,'
explained the American.
'My throat-doctor says motoring is very bad for the voice, so I've
given it up,' Margaret said.
'Really? Thank goodness your profession has been of some use to you at
last, my dear!'
Margaret laughed.
'Tell us about the Russian count,' she said. 'Has he found lodgings,
or is he going to sleep in his motor?'
'My dear, he's the most original man you ever heard of! First he
wanted to buy the hotel and turn us all out, and offered any price for
it, but the director said it was owned by a company in Munich. Then he
sent his secretary about trying to buy a house, while he dined, but
that didn't succeed either. He must be very wealthy, or else quite
mad.'
'Mad, I should say,' observed Mr. Van Torp, slowly peeling a peach.
'Did you happen to catch his name, Mrs. Rushmore?'
'Oh, yes! We heard nothing else all the afternoon. His name is
Kralinsky--Count Kralinsky.'
Mr. Van Torp continued to peel his peach scientifically and
economically, though he was aware that Margaret was looking at him
with sudden curiosity.
'Kralinsky,' he said slowly, keeping his eyes on the silver blade of
the knife as he finished what he was doing. 'It's not an uncommon
name, I believe. I've heard it before. Sounds Polish, doesn't it?'
He looked up suddenly and showed Margaret the peeled peach on his
fork. He smiled as he met her eyes, and she nodded so slightly that
Mrs. Rushmore did not notice the movement.
'Did you ever see that done better?' he asked with an air of triumph.
'Ripping!' Margaret answered. 'You're a dandy dab at it!'
'My dear child, what terrible slang!'
'I'm sorry,' said Margaret. 'I'm catching all sorts of American
expressions from Mr. Van Torp, and when they get mixed up with my
English ones the result is Babel, I suppose!'
'I've not heard Mr. Van Torp use any slang expressions yet, my dear,'
said Mrs. Rushmore, almost severely.
'You will,' Margaret retorted with a laugh. 'What became of Count
Kralinsky? I didn't mean to spoil your story.'
'My dear, he's got the Pastor to give up his house, by offering him a
hundred pounds for the poor here.'
'It's cheap,' observed Mr. Van Torp. 'The poor always are.'
'You two are saying the most dreadful things to-night!' cried Mrs.
Rushmore.
'Nothing dreadful in that, Mrs. Rushmore,' objected the millionaire.
'There's no investment on earth like charity.'
'We are taught that by charity we lay up treasures in heaven,' said
the good lady.
'Provided it's not mentioned in the newspapers,' retorted Mr. Van
Torp. 'When it is, we lay up treasures on earth. I don't like to
mention other men in that connexion, especially as I've done the same
thing myself now and then, just to quiet things down; but I suppose
some names will occur to you right away, don't they? Where is the
Pastor going to sleep, now that the philanthropist has bought him
out?'
'I really don't know,' answered Mrs. Rushmore.
'Then he's the real philanthropist,' said Van Torp. 'If he understood
the power of advertisement, and wanted it, he'd let it be known that
he was going to sleep on the church steps without enough blankets, for
the good of the poor who are to have the money, and he'd get everybody
to come and look at him in his sleep, and notice how good he was.
Instead of that, he's probably turned in under the back stairs, in the
coal-hole, without saying anything about it. I don't know how it
strikes you, Mrs. Rushmore, but it does seem to me that the
clergyman's the real philanthropist after all!'
'Indeed he is, poor man,' said Margaret, a good deal surprised at Van
Torp's sermon on charity, and wondering vaguely whether he was talking
for effect or merely saying what he really thought.
An effect certainly followed.
'You put it very sensibly, I'm sure,' said Mrs. Rushmore, 'though of
course I should not have looked for anything else from a
fellow-countryman I respect. You startled me a little at first, when
you said that the poor are always cheap! Only that, I assure you.'
'Well,' answered the American, 'I never was very good at expressing
myself, but I'm glad we think alike, for I must say I value your
opinion very highly, Mrs. Rushmore, as I had learned to value the
opinion of your late husband.'
'You're very kind,' she said, in a grateful tone.
Margaret was not sure that she was pleased as she realised how easily
Van Torp played upon her old friend's feelings and convictions, and
she wondered whether he had not already played on her own that night,
in much the same way. But with the mere thought his words and his
voice came back to her, with his talk about the uselessness of ever
repeating what he had said that once, because he knew she could never
forget it. And her young instinct told her that he dealt with the
elderly woman precisely as if she were a man, with all the ease that
proceeded from his great knowledge of men and their weaknesses; but
that with herself, in his ignorance of feminine ways, he could only be
quite natural.
He left them soon after supper, and gave himself up to Stemp,
pondering over what he had accomplished in two days, and also about
another question which had lately presented itself. When he was ready
to send his valet to bed he sat down at his table and wrote a
telegram:
'If you can find Barak, please explain that I was mistaken. Kralinsky
is not in New York, but here in Bayreuth for some days, lodging at the
Pastor's house.'
This message was addressed to Logotheti at his lodgings in London, and
Van Torp signed it and gave it to Stemp to be sent at once. Logotheti
never went to bed before two o'clock, as he knew, and might very
possibly get the telegram the same night.
When his man was gone, Van Torp drew his chair to the open window and
sat up a long time thinking about what he had just done; for though he
held that all was fair in such a contest, he did not mean to do
anything which he himself thought 'low-down.' One proof of this odd
sort of integrity was that the telegram itself was a fair warning of
his presence in Bayreuth, where Logotheti knew that Margaret was still
stopping.
As for the rest, he was quite convinced that it was Kralinsky himself,
the ruby merchant, who had suddenly appeared at Bayreuth, and that
this man was no other than the youth he had met long ago as a cow-boy
in the West, who used to whistle _Parsifal_ with his companion in
exile, and who, having grown rich, had lost no time in coming to
Europe for the very purpose of hearing the music he had always loved
so well. And that this man had robbed the poor Tartar girl, Mr. Van
Torp had no manner of doubt; and he believed that he had probably
promised her marriage and abandoned her; and if this were true, to
help her to find Kralinsky was in itself a good action.