involuntarily on his sword-hilt showed every bone of the knuckles, so
tense was the grip. Something in his expression frightened her.
"I do not mean you alone," she stammered, "but all of you. You are
jealous of us and you hate us. When you marry one of us, you do your
best to isolate her, to cut her off from her country and her people."
"Is that not inevitable--right, even? But have I done that?"
"No."
Her conscience smote her as she looked up at him standing erect and
stern before her. She realised that another and graver issue had arisen
between them--an issue that was perhaps the source of all. She realised
that there had been something more than fear and a consequent
irritability in her attitude towards him. She had not seen her husband
in him, but only the representative of thousands who might soon be
marching against her country, and for one short minute at least she had
hated him. The realisation horrified her, drove her to a reckless
attempt at atonement.
"Oh, forgive me, Wolff!" she cried eagerly. "I am simply unbearable
this afternoon. Father has written a worrying letter--about mother--and
that made me nervous and bad-tempered. Forgive me, dear. Don't be
angry at the silly things I have said."
He yielded to the hands that drew him towards her, and kissed her, but
rather gravely, as though he more than half-doubted her explanation.
"I am not angry, Nora. I only ask you to try and understand. God
knows"--she thought his voice changed, and grew less certain--"I would
never willingly come between you and any one you cared for, but I have
my honour to protect, and your honour is mine."
"Wolff, what do you mean? Have I done anything dishonourable?"
"No, dear. You cannot see things from my standpoint. You have been
brought up with other ideas. I have tried to explain before. We have a
double task. For our names' sake and for the sake of the uniform we
wear we must keep ourselves from the very breath of evil. And that
applies to every one connected with us."
Nora drew her hands away.
"I think I understand," she said. "For those two fetishes everything
must be sacrificed. I will do my best to satisfy them and you."
"Thank you, Nora. I trust you implicitly."
She went to the door, hesitated, and then stole out. But in that
moment's hesitation she had caught a glimpse of him standing at his
table in an attitude of dejection, and had heard a smothered sigh of
pain.
"I am miserable," she thought, "and I have made him miserable. How will
it all end?"
In trembling haste she dressed and hurried out. She had a one
all-dominating desire to seek help and comfort from some one who could
understand her, some one, too, who held Wolff's happiness higher than
her own and could be just to both. She needed a woman's comfort, and
she turned now to Frau von Arnim. Hitherto she had shrunk from the
inevitable meeting, now she sought it with the desperation of one who
knows no other course. She had indeed no one else to turn to. Before
Wolff she was tongue-tied. It was not only that silence was forced upon
her by a mingled pride and fear; the subtle understanding between them
had been rudely broken, and though their love for each other remained,
they had inwardly become something worse than strangers. For there is
no reserve so complete, so insurmountable, so surcharged with bitterness
as that which follows on a great passion. And then, too, what had she
to say to him? "I love you; but I have brought ruin upon your life. I
love you; but I am not happy with you." Had she even the right to say
that to him? Was it not, in any case, useless? Yet she knew she must
unburden her heart, if for no other reason than that the power to keep
silence was passing out of her hands.
Thus it was natural that her footsteps turned for the first time towards
the little flat near the Brandenburger Tor. And on her road she met
Arnold himself. It was as though fate pursued her.
"I was on my way to you," he said quietly, as he turned to walk by her
side. "I have something to tell you, and should have been sorry if we
had missed. It is about Miles."
Nora glanced at him, and her eyes were full of a miserable gratitude.
"How good you are to me!" she said. "I have not deserved it; you are my
only friend here."
"Surely not," he answered. "What I can do is little enough. I have
found out the full extent of Miles's liabilities and have endeavoured to
persuade his creditors to wait. Unfortunately, they are obdurate on the
subject. They believe there is going to be war and that your brother
might leave Berlin suddenly. It seems to me that you should do one of
two things, Nora--either allow me to--to advance the money, or to tell
your husband the truth."
She put up her hand with a movement of involuntary protest.
"You know that the first is out of the question," she said proudly.
"And the second! Oh, Robert, I am afraid! It may ruin Wolff, and
then--they hate each other so. Wolff will send him away, and----"
She broke off with a quick breath that was like a sob.
"Isn't that the best thing that can happen?" Arnold answered. "Your
brother will never do any good here. He is better in England."
"Yes, I know, I know. He has been weak and foolish. He is so--young."
Her voice was full of a piteous apology. "And perhaps it was my
fault--a little, at least. But I can't let him go, Robert. Whatever
else he is, he is my brother, and I am so alone."
"Alone!" He looked at her aghast. "What do you mean?"
"Don't you understand? It's so easy--so simple. I am a stranger here.
I am hated and distrusted. I suppose it was inevitable. In a few days
you will have gone, and if Miles goes too I shall have no one left----"
"Nora!" he interrupted sternly. "There is your husband."
"Wolff--yes, there is Wolff. Robert, they say there will be war. Is it
true?"
He frowned with perplexity. For the moment he could not follow her
thought, and her question seemed to him erratic and purposeless.
"It is possible. For my part, I hope it may come to that. Things have
been drifting to a crisis for a long time, and we must assert ourselves
once and for all. These beggars are beginning to suspect us of fear or
incompetence, and the sooner they are disillusioned the better."
Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her face, and stopped short. "Nora,
what is the matter?"
"You forget," she said hoarsely. "I am not English any more."
They walked on in silence, Arnold too startled and overwhelmed by the
conflict which she in one short sentence had revealed to him to speak or
think.
"I was a thoughtless fool," he said at last. "For the moment I could
not imagine you as anything but my own countrywoman. Now I see; and it
is terrible for you--terrible. Even marriage cannot blot out one's
nationality."
They had reached the door of the Arnims' flat, and she stopped and faced
him with wide-open, desperate eyes.
"Nothing can!" she said. "And I know this--if there is war it will
break my heart, or drive me mad. I don't know which."
Never before had she felt so drawn to him by all the ties of friendship
and blood, and yet she went up the steps without a word of farewell.
Arnold understood, and looked after her with a tender pity. He believed
that he had crushed all passion out of his heart, but that a love
remained which was infinitely greater, purified, as it seemed, from the
dross of selfish desire. He felt as he stood there that he would
willingly have given his life to save her from the threatening struggle,
and yet--such is the irony of things--in that same moment he
unconsciously brought her even deeper into the complicated tangle of her
life. The door had opened, and a short, plump little woman stood on the
threshold. She saw Nora, bowed, hesitated as though she would have
spoken; then her eyes fell on Arnold, and she passed on down the steps
with a cold, blank stare.
"Who was she, I wonder?" Arnold thought indifferently. "What was the
matter?"
Poor Nora could have answered both questions, and a numbing sense of
hopelessness crept over her as she toiled slowly up the stone stairs.
She felt already, without knowing why, that she had come in vain. They
were all her enemies, they all hated her. Why should Frau von Arnim be
different from the rest? Had not Arnold said, "She is a cold, hard woman
who will make trouble"? And yet, as she entered the narrow sitting-room
of her aunt's new home, something of her first hope revived. Frau von
Arnim was alone. She stood at the writing-table by the window,
apparently looking out into the street, and Nora saw the resolute,
aristocratic profile and graceful figure with a heart-throb of relief.
This woman was like her mother in all that was noble and
generous--perhaps she would be to her as a mother, perhaps she would
really understand and help her in her great need.
"Aunt Magda!" she said. Her voice sounded breathless. A curious
excitement possessed her, so that she could say no more. She felt that
everything, her whole future life, depended on Frau von Arnim's first
words.
The elder woman turned slowly. Had the faintest warmth of kindness
brightened her face, Nora might have flung herself into her arms and
poured out the whole story of her errors, her sorrows, her aching sense
of divided duty; but Frau von Arnim's face was cold, impassive, and the
hand she extended indifferent, her kiss icy. Nora drew back. In an
instant everything in her had frozen. A dawning bitterness and
resentment shut the gates of her heart against all confidence, all
affection. She felt that here was an enemy from whom she need expect
neither help nor mercy, and she seated herself with the hard, set face
of a criminal who knows that he is before an unjust judge.
"I am glad that you have come at last, Nora," Frau von Arnim said
calmly. "We had been hoping to see you some days ago. No doubt you
have a great many friends who claim your attention."
Her quiet words were free from all sarcasm, and, indeed, every trace of
feeling, but they stung Nora by their very indifference.
"I came as soon as I thought you would be glad to see me," she said. "I
did not think you would want visitors whilst you were settling down."
Frau von Arnim studied the sullen girlish face opposite. She might well
have retorted that a helping hand is always welcome, even in "settling
down," and that Frau von Seleneck, despite her own household cares, had
been daily to lend her advice and assistance. But it was not Magda von
Arnim's custom to reproach for neglect, and, moreover, she had another
and more important matter on her mind.
"Hildegarde is lying down at present," she said in answer to Nora's
question, "and perhaps it is just as well. I have something I wish to
speak to you about whilst we are alone."
Nora stiffened in her chair. She felt already trapped and browbeaten,
and her eyes were bright with defiance as they met Frau von Arnim's
steady gaze.
"I would have written to you," Frau von Arnim went on, in the same
judicial tone, "but I knew that my letters would find their way into
Wolff's hands, and at that time I felt sure that you have some
sufficient explanation to offer us for the unbelievable story which your
friend, Captain Arnold, was clumsy enough to relate to us. I felt, as I
say, sure that there was some painful mistake, and one which it would be
unkind and useless to tell Wolff. Besides, for your sake I thought it
better to wait. If there was some mistake, as I firmly believed, a
letter could only have troubled and puzzled you. So I waited, meaning
to ask you privately for an explanation. Since I have been in Berlin I
have heard enough to see that my caution was altogether unnecessary."
"Aunt Magda!"
Frau von Arnim lifted a quiet hand, as though to command silence.
"It is obvious that Captain Arnold must have told you of our interview,"
she said, "and obvious that you have remained his friend. I hear that
he is constantly at your house. I do not know what Wolff thinks and
feels on the matter. He loves you, and is himself too honourable not to
have a blind confidence in you. That, however, is not sufficient. _I_
must know whether that confidence is justified."
Nora wondered afterwards that she did not get up then and go. Every
inflection of the calm voice was a fresh insult, and yet she felt
spell-bound, incapable of either attack or self-defence. In her mind
she kept on repeating, "YOU are cruel, wicked, and unjust!" but the
words were never spoken; they were stifled by the very violence of her
indignation and growing hatred.
Frau von Arnim saw the hatred and interpreted it in the light of her own
bitterness. For, little as Nora knew it, her "enemy" was suffering
intensely. There were in Frau von Arnim's heart two things worth more
to her than love or happiness: they were the fetishes against which Nora
had railed in scorn and anger--"_Standesehre_" and pride of name. Since
her arrival in Berlin a scandal had drifted to Frau von Arnim's ears
which had been like a vital blow at the two great principles on which
her life was built; and had Wolff been the cause instead of Nora she
would not have been less severe, less indignant. As it was, she saw in
his wife a careless, perhaps unworthy bearer of her name and her scorn
and disappointment smothered what had been, and might still have been, a
deep affection.
"I must ask you to answer one question," she continued. "Was it true
what Captain Arnold told me? Were you his promised wife at the time when
you married Wolff?"
Nora's lips parted as though in an impulsive answer, then closed again,
and for a moment she sat silent, with her eyes fixed full on her
interlocutor's face. The time had surely come to give her explanation,
to appeal to the other's pity and sympathy for what had, after all, been
no more than an act of youthful folly--even generous in its impulse.
But she could say nothing. The stern, cold face froze her in a prison of
ice, and she could do no more than answer in a reckless affirmative.
"Yes; it was perfectly true."
"Do you think your conduct was honourable, or fair to Wolff? Have you
no explanation to offer?"
Nora rose to her feet. She was white with anger and indignation.
"None that I need offer you, Frau von Arnim," she said. Unconsciously
she had reverted to the old formal title, and in her blind sense of
injury and injustice she did not see the spasm of pain which passed over
the elder woman's face.
Frau von Arnim also rose. She appeared calm almost to the point of
indifference, but in reality her whole strength was concentrated on the
suppression of her own emotion, and for once in a way the
generous-minded, broad-hearted woman saw and understood nothing but
herself.
"You force me to speak openly, Nora," she said. "I must point out to you
that you have done something which in our eyes is nearly unpardonable.
An engagement is almost as binding as a marriage and until it is
dissolved no honourable woman or man has the right to enter into another
alliance. But that is what you did; and whether you have an explanation
to offer or not, makes, after all, no difference. What is done cannot
be undone. But you are now no longer the Miss Ingestre who was free to
act as she chose in such matters. You are my nephew's wife, and you
bear our name and the responsibility which it implies. Whatsoever you do
reflects itself for good or evil upon him and upon us all. Therefore we
have the right to control your conduct and to make this demand--that you
keep our name from scandal. That you have not done. From every quarter
I hear the same warnings, the same insinuations. It is not only Captain
Arnold who has caused them--I alone know the worst--it is your
friendship with people outside our circle, your neglect of those to whom
you are at least bound by duty, if not by affection. Before it goes too
far to be mended, I ask--I demand that your intimacy with these people
and with this Captain Arnold should cease."
"Captain Arnold is my friend," Nora exclaimed. "The only friend I have."
Had Frau von Arnim been less self-absorbed that one sentence might have
opened her eyes and shown her a pitiful figure enough, overburdened with
trouble and loneliness. But Nora's head was thrown back, and the
defiant attitude blinded the other to the tears that were gathered in
the stormy, miserable eyes.
"You appear only to consider yourself and your own pleasure," Frau von
Arnim answered, "and that is not the point. The point is, what is good
for Wolff and Wolff's reputation? It is not good for either that your
name should be coupled with another man's, or that his brother-in-law
should, in a few weeks, make himself renowned as a drunkard and a
reprobate."
Nora took an impulsive step forward. She had come to make her
confession, her explanation, to throw the burden of her brother's
delinquencies upon these stronger shoulders. Now everything was
forgotten save resentment, the passionate need to defend herself and her
blood from insult.
"That is not true!" she stammered. "Nothing that you have said is true.
I have not been dishonourable, and Miles----" She broke off because her
conscience accused her, and a smile of bitterness passed over Frau von
Arnim's pale features.
"Then all I can say is that English people must have an extraordinary
sense of honour," she said.
Perhaps she regretted her own hasty words, but it was too late to recall
them. A blank silence followed. Both felt that the straining bond
between them had snapped and that they stood opposite each other like
two people separated by an untraversable river.
Nora went to the door and from thence looked back at the proud figure of
her adversary.
"You have no right to speak to me as you have done," she said in a voice
that she strove in vain to steady. "What I do concerns no one but Wolff
and myself, and I need not and shall not alter my life because of what
you have said. You can do what you like--tell Wolff everything: I am
not afraid. As to what you said about us--the English--it only proves
what I already knew--you hate us because you envy us!"
And with this explosion of youthful jingoism she closed the door upon
her last hope of help and comfort. But outside in the narrow, dusky hall
she broke down. A strange faintness came over her, which numbed her
limbs and senses and drew a veil before her eyes. A cry rose to her
lips, and had that cry been uttered it might have changed the whole
course of her life, sweeping down the barrier between her and the
stern-faced woman by its very weakness, its very pitifulness. But she
crushed it back and, calling upon the last reserves of her strength,
went her way, too proud to plead for pity where she had already found
judgment.
*CHAPTER XII*
*WAR-CLOUDS*
Nora had not seen Arnim the whole morning. He sat in his study with the
door locked, and the orderly had injunctions to allow no one to disturb
him. Nevertheless, towards midday a staff-officer was shown through the
drawing-room into Wolff's sanctum, and for an hour the two men were
together, nothing being heard of them save the regular rise and fall of
their voices.
"What has the fellow come about?" Miles demanded in a tone of injury.
"One would think they were concocting a regular Guy Fawkes plot, with
their shut doors and their whisperings--or making plans for the
Invasion."
Nora looked at her brother. He was lying full-length on the sofa,
reading the latest paper from home; and as he had done very little else
since he had lounged in to breakfast an hour late, complaining of a
severe headache, Nora strongly suspected him of having varied the
"Foreign Intelligence" with supplementary instalments of his night's
repose.
"Is there any news?" she asked. She put the question with an effort,
dreading the answer, and Miles grunted angrily.
"Things don't move much one way or the other," he said. "They stay as
bad as they can be. The beggars won't go for us--they're funking it at
the last moment, worse luck!"
"Why 'worse luck'?"
"Because it is time the cheek was thrashed out of them." He turned a
little on one side, so as to be able to see his sister's face. "What
are you going to do when the trouble begins?" he asked.
Nora's head sank over her work.
"I shall stay by my husband."
"Poor old girl!"
Nora made no answer. She was listening to the voices next door, and
wondering what they were saying. Was Miles's suggestion possible? Was
it true that her husband sat before his table hour after hour absorbed
in plans for her country's ruin, his whole strength of mind and body set
on the supreme task? And if so, what part did she play--she, his wife?
"And you, Miles?" she asked suddenly. "What will you do?"
He laughed uneasily.
"If my Jew friend gives me the chance, I shall make a bolt for it," he
said. "It's a nuisance having all these confounded debts. I wish you
weren't so stand-offish with the Bauers, Nora. If you had only sugared
them a little----"
"Don't!" she interrupted almost sternly. "Your debts must be paid
somehow, but not that way. Wolff must be told."
"Wolff!" He stared at her open-mouthed.
"There is nothing else to be done, unless father can help you."
"The pater won't move a finger," Miles assured her. "And if you tell
your righteous husband, there will be the devil of a row."
He sat up rather abruptly as he spoke, for at that moment the study door
opened, and Wolff and his visitor entered. Both men looked absorbed and
tired, and Wolff's usually keen eyes had an absent expression in them,
as though he were mentally engaged in some affair of importance and
difficulty. His companion, however, a tall, ungainly major whom Nora had
always liked because of his openly-expressed admiration for her
husband's abilities, immediately assumed his manner of the gay and
empty-headed cavalier.
"You must forgive my taking so much of your husband's time, _gnaedige
Frau_," he said as he kissed Nora's hand. "I had some rather stiff
calculations, and I simply couldn't do them alone--you have no doubt
heard what a dull person I am--so I came round to Arnim for help. There
is nothing like having a clever junior, is there?"
He turned to Wolff with his easy, untroubled smile, but Wolff's face
remained serious. He was buckling on his sword in preparation for
departure, and appeared not to have heard his major's facetious
self-depreciation.
"By the way, I have a small invitation for you, _gnaedige Frau_," the
elder officer went on. "A sort of peace-offering, as it were. My wife
is driving out to see the Kaiser's review this afternoon, and asks if
you would care to accompany her. If you have not seen it before it will
be well worth your while to go."
"Thank you. I should be delighted!" Nora said eagerly. She knew Major
von Hollander's wife as a harmless if rather colourless woman, who had
as yet shown no signs of joining in the general boycott to which Nora
was being subjected. Besides, every instinct in her clamoured for
freedom from her thoughts and from the stuffy, oppressive atmosphere of
this home, which seemed now less a home than a prison. She accepted the
offer, therefore, with a real enthusiasm, which was heightened as she
saw that her ready answer had pleased Wolff. He came back after the
major had taken his leave, and kissed her.
"Thank you, Nora," he said. "It is good of you to go."
"Why good of me? I want to go."
"Then I am grateful to you for wanting."
Nora did not understand him, nor did she see that he was embarrassed by
her question. She felt the tenderness in his voice and touch, and it
awoke in her a sudden response.
"Don't overwork, dear," she said. "Couldn't you come with us?"
"I can't, little woman. When the Emperor calls----"
He finished his sentence with a mock-heroic gesture, and hurried towards
the door. The major had coughed discreetly outside in the narrow hall,
and in an instant duty had resumed its predominating influence in his
life.
Nora took an involuntary step after him and laid her hand upon his arm.
She wanted to hold him back and tell him--she hardly knew what; perhaps
the one simple fact that she loved him in spite of everything, perhaps
that she was sorry her love was so frail, so wavering; perhaps even, if
they had been alone, she would have thrown down the whole burden of her
heart and conscience with the appeal, "Forgive me! Help me!"
It was one of those fleeting moments when, in the very midst of discord,
of embittered strife, a sudden tenderness, shortlived but full of
possibilities, breaks through the walls of antagonism. Something in
Wolff's voice or look had touched Nora. She remembered the first days
of their marriage, and with hasty, groping fingers sought to link past
with present.
"Wolff!" she said.
Very gently, but firmly, he loosened her clasp. He heard the major move
impatiently; he knew nothing of the bridge which she had lowered for him
to cross and take her in his old possession. And even if he had known
he could not have acted otherwise.
"I must go, dear," he said. "I am on important duty."
"More important than I am?"
"Yes, even more important than you are!"
She drew back of her own accord and let him go. The moment's
self-surrender was gone, and because it had been in vain the gulf
between them had widened.
Miles laughed as he saw her face.
"It must be amusing to be married to a German," he said. "I suppose you
are never an important duty, are you?"
Nora went out of the room without answering. She almost hated Miles for
his biting, if disguised criticism; she hated herself because it awoke
in her an echo, a bitter resentment against her husband. She was the
secondary consideration: he proved it every day of his life. His
so-called duty was no more in her eyes than an insatiable ambition which
thrust every other consideration on one side. He had never yet given up
a day's work to her pleasure; he sat hour after hour locked in his room,
and toiled for his advancement, indifferent to her loneliness, to the
bitter struggle which was being fought out in the secrecy of her heart;
and when she came to him, as in that vital moment, with outstretched
hands, pleading for his help and pity, he had thrust her aside because,
forsooth, he had "important duty"! He was like those other men she had
met who dressed their wives like beggars rather than go with a shabby
uniform or deny themselves a good horse. He was selfish,
self-important, and she was no more in his life than a toy--or at most
an unpaid housekeeper, as her father had prophesied. How right they had
been, those home-people! How true their warnings had proved themselves!
Her love had intoxicated her, blinded her to the insurmountable
barriers. She saw now, more clearly than ever before, in her dawning
recognition, that she stood alone, without a friend, in the innermost
depths of her nature a stranger even to her husband. And he had not
helped her. He had left her to her solitude, he had cut her off from
the one companion who might have made her life bearable. He was as
narrow, as bigoted as the rest of those who judged her by the poor
standard of their foreign prejudices and customs. The thought of that
last interview with Frau von Arnim was fuel to the kindling fire in
Nora's brain. She had been treated like a criminal--or, worse, like a
silly child who has been caught stealing. She had been ordered to
obedience like a will-less inferior who has been admitted into the
circle of higher beings and must submit to the extreme rigour of their
laws. Whereas, it was she who had condescended, who had sacrificed her
more glorious birthright to associate with them! All that was obstinate
and proud in Nora's nature rose and overwhelmed the dread of the
threatening consequences. Let Frau von Arnim tell her husband the truth
as she knew it! Let Wolff despise her, cast her and hers from him as,
according to his rigid code of honour, he was bound to do! It would but
hasten the catastrophe which in Nora's eyes was becoming inevitable.
Her love for her husband sank submerged beneath the accumulation of a
bitterness and an antagonism which was not so much personal as national.
Thus it was in no peaceful or conciliatory mood that she took her place
in Frau von Hollander's carriage that afternoon. Her manners were
off-hand, her remarks tinged with an intentional arrogance which led her
meek companion to the conclusion that public opinion was right, after
all, and _die kleine Englaenderin_ an intolerable person. Nevertheless,
she did her best to act the part of amiable hostess, and attempted to
draw Nora's attention to the points of interest as they passed.
"All the regiments in Berlin will be there," she said with a pardonable
pride. "That is not a thing one can see every day, you know. It will
be a grand sight. They are the finest regiments in the world."
"In Germany, perhaps," Nora observed.
Her companion made no answer, and Nora tried to believe that she was
satisfied with her own sharpness. How these foreigners boasted! It was
a good thing to point out to them that not every one was so impressed
with their marvels.
Yet, as they reached the Tempelhofer Felde Nora had hard work to
restrain her naturally lively interest and curiosity from breaking
bounds. The regiments had already taken up their positions. Solid
square after square, they spread out as far as the eye could reach, a
motionless bulwark of strength, bayonets and swords glittering like a
sea of silver in the bright December sunshine. Wolff had taught Nora to
recognise them, and she took a curious pride in her knowledge, though
she said nothing, and her eyes expressed a cold, critical indifference.
"How fine the _Kuerassiers_ look!" Frau von Hollander said
enthusiastically. "I have a cousin among them. They are all six-foot
men--a regiment of giants."
"Rather like our Horse Guards," Nora returned; "but your horses are not
so fine."
Frau von Hollander pursed her lips, and the bands striking up with the
National Anthem put an end to the dangerous colloquy. The colour rushed
to Nora's cheeks as she listened to the massed sound. She thought for
an instant it was "God Save the King" that they were playing, and the
tears of a deeply stirred patriotism rushed to her eyes. It was only a
moment's illusion. Then the dazzling simultaneous flash of arms, a
loud, abrupt cheer from the crowd about them reminded her of the truth.
It was not the King who rode past amidst his resplendent Staff--it was
the German Emperor--HER Emperor! She caught a glimpse of the resolute,
bronze face, and because she was at the bottom neither narrow nor
prejudiced, she paid her tribute of admiration ungrudgingly, for the
moment forgetful of all the issues that were at stake. With eager eyes
she followed the cortege as it passed rapidly before the motionless
regiments. The resounding cheer which answered the Emperor's greeting
thrilled her, and when he at last took his stand at the head of his
Staff, and the regiments swung past, moving as one man amidst the crash
of martial music, she stood up that she might lose no detail in the
brilliant scene, her hands clenched, her pulses throbbing with a strange
kind of enthusiasm. It was her first Kaiser parade; it overwhelmed her,
not alone by its brilliancy but by the solidity, the strength and
discipline it revealed; and had Frau von Hollander at that moment
ventured a word of admiration she would have received no depreciatory
comparison as answer. But poor Frau von Hollander had had enough for
one day. She sat quiet and wordless, and silently lamented her own
good-nature in taking such a disagreeable little foreigner with her in
her expensive carriage.
The charge past had just begun when Nora heard her companion speak for
the first time. It was not to her, however, but to a young dragoon
officer who had taken up his stand at the carriage door, and Nora was
much too absorbed to take any further notice of him. Their
conversation, however, reached her ears, and she found herself listening
mechanically even whilst her real attention was fixed on the great
military pageant before her.
"The criticism should be good to-day," the officer was saying.
"_Tadellos, nicht wahr_? Even the Emperor should be satisfied. I don't
think we have much to fear from the future."
"From the future?" Frau von Hollander interrogated. She was not a clever
woman, and her topics of the day--like her clothes--belonged usually to
a remote period.
"I mean when the row comes," the dragoon explained. "We have all sealed
orders, you know. No hurry, no bustle, no excitement; but when the
Emperor presses the button--wiff!--then we shall be _en route_ for
England."
The brilliant picture before Nora's eyes faded. She was listening now
with tight-set lips and beating heart.
"Ach, you mean the war!" her hostess said. "My husband is so reticent
on the subject. I never hear anything at all. You think it will really
come to that?"
"No doubt whatever--unless the English are ready to eat humble-pie.
They are afraid of us because they see we are getting stronger, but they
are equally afraid to strike. Their ancestors would have struck years
ago, and now it is too late. Their navy is big on paper, but absolutely
untried. As to their army----" He laughed good-naturedly. "That won't
give us much trouble."
"You mean that it is not big enough?"
Frau von Hollander was pretending to forget Nora's existence, but there
was a spite in her tone which was not altogether unpardonable. She was
grateful for this opportunity to pay back the slights of the last hour.
"It is not merely too small," the officer returned judiciously; "it is
no good against men like ours. Their so-called regulars are picked up
out of the gutters, and the rest are untrained clerks and schoolboys who
scarcely know how to shoot----"
Nora turned.
"That is a lie!" she said deliberately.
The conversation had been carried on loud enough to reach the adjoining
carriages, and Nora's clear voice caused more than one occupant to turn
in her direction. They saw a pretty young woman standing erect,
white-lipped, with shining eyes, confronting a scarlet-faced officer,
who for a moment appeared too taken aback to answer.
"I beg your pardon, _gnaedige Frau_," he stammered at last, with his
hand lifted mechanically to his helmet. "I--I did not quite
understand----"
"I said that it was a lie," Nora repeated. "Everything you said was a
lie. We are not afraid of you, and our soldiers are the best and
bravest soldiers in the world!"
The dragoon looked helplessly at Frau von Hollander, and the latter
decided on a belated rescue.
"It is most unfortunate," she said with pious regret. "I really quite
forgot for the moment. Frau von Arnim was English before her
marriage----"
"----and is English still!" Nora interrupted proudly. "Please let me
pass. I am going home."
"Then tell the coachman. I cannot let you walk."
Frau von Hollander was now thoroughly alarmed. She felt that the matter
had gone too far, and was ready to atone in any possible way. But Nora
thrust the detaining hand aside.
"I would rather walk," she said between her clenched teeth. She sprang
from the carriage, ignoring the dragoon's offer of assistance. That
unfortunate young officer followed her, his face crimson with very real
distress.
"Please forgive me, _gnaedige Frau_," he stammered. "How was I to know?
Your name was German, and I had no idea--and a fellow talks such rot
sometimes. Please forgive me!"
He was so young, so sincere and boyish in his regret that her heart
under any other circumstances might have softened. But the insult had
fallen on an open wound, and the pain was intolerable.
"You said what you thought, and you lied," she said. "That is all that
matters."
He drew aside with a stiff salute.
"I have apologised. I can do no more," he said, and turned on his heel.
Thus poor Nora toiled her way over the hard, frozen roads alone, her
thin-shod feet aching, her heart beating to suffocation with anger and
misery. But she was unconscious of pain or weariness. Her English
pride, the high love of her land had risen like a tide and swept her
forward--to what end she neither knew nor cared.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*ULTIMATUM*
"I do not know if I have done right in telling you," Frau von Arnim
said. "I had not meant to do so, but circumstances--and Nora--have
forced me. Had she offered me any reasonable explanation, or promised
to put an end to her intimacy with this Captain Arnold, I should not
have thought it necessary to speak to you on the matter. She chose to
ignore my appeal and my advice, and I felt that there was no other
course left open to me but to warn you and to give you my reasons for
doing so."
"I am sure you meant it all for the best," Wolff answered. "All the
same--I would rather have waited until Nora had told me herself."
He was standing by the window, and did not see the sceptical lifting of
his aunt's eyebrows. She frowned immediately afterwards, as though
annoyed at her own display of feeling.
"It would have been better," she admitted calmly; "but Nora is in a
state of mind which does not encourage hope. I cannot help saying so,
Wolff; she has changed very much since the Karlsburg days."
"I know," he answered. "She has changed just in this last month or two.
Poor little wife!"
"Other people have noticed it," his aunt went on. "The Selenecks, the
Freibergs, all our best friends have the same complaint to make. She is
off-hand, sometimes deliberately rude; and that sort of thing does not
help to stop the scandal that is growing round her. Elsa Seleneck does
not usually klatsch, but she is merciless where Nora is concerned, and
it is all the more unpleasant because they were once good friends. I can
only suppose that Nora has come under the influence of her brother and
this man--this----"
"Nora's friendship with Captain Arnold is absolutely innocent," Wolff
said firmly. "No doubt they have that sort of thing in England."
"Perhaps so, but we do not. People see this Englishman at your house
day after day. There seems no reason for his constant visits. They
call each other by their Christian names and go out together. Who can
blame any one for putting the worst interpretation on Nora's conduct?
And they are beginning to blame you, Wolff."
"Me?"
"They say that you ought not to tolerate her brother's presence in your
house--that you ought to send this Arnold to the right-about."
He winced.
"I can't. She would never forgive me."
"Wolff! Has she grown more important than everything else in life?"
"No, no," he answered almost impatiently. "But she is young and
careless--not bad. She has done nothing to deserve such treatment at my
hands."
Frau von Arnim rose and came to his side.
"I know that she is not bad," she said. "At the bottom of her heart
Nora may be honest, but she is headstrong and foolish, and folly can
lead to the same catastrophes as deliberate wickedness. Unless you hold
her back with a strong hand, Wolff, she will alienate you from all your
friends, she will bring an unpleasant scandal upon our name and perhaps
ruin your career. These last two things are more precious to me than
anything on earth, and that is why I have spoken to you and put the
matter in its most serious light. You must show her how wrong she is."
Wolff turned and looked his companion steadily in the eyes. He had just
returned from a hard afternoon's work, and it was perhaps the recent
fatigue which had drawn the colour from his face and left him with deep
lines about the mouth and across the white forehead.
"Is she wrong?" he said. "Do you know, I am not sure, Aunt Magda. I am
beginning to think the mistake is all mine. I loved her so, and she is
so impetuous and warm-hearted. I carried her off her feet before she
had time to think, to realise what she was giving up. And now--well, I
suppose she is beginning to realise; the glamour has all gone, and her
love"--he steadied his voice with an effort--"hasn't proved to be what
she thought it was. It isn't strong enough to bring the sacrifices, and
she is hungry for her own country and her own people. One can't blame
her."
Frau von Arnim sighed.
"And when the war comes--what then?" she asked.
"God knows!"
He dropped wearily into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
"We can but hope for the best," he said. "I must wait and be patient."
"You will say nothing to her, Wolff?"
"No. I do not understand what you have told me. I cannot believe that
she should have deceived me and kept the secret so long, nor can I
understand Captain Arnold's conduct. Nevertheless, I trust Nora, and
one day perhaps she will tell me everything."
His aunt shook her head. That "one day" seemed too far off, too
impossible, and in the meantime she saw the man with the bowed head, and
understood something of what he was suffering.
"Do what you think best," she said, and, obeying a sudden impulse of
tenderness, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. "Only let no harm come
to the name, Wolff. It is all I ask, for your sake and for mine."
He took the hand and lifted it to his lips.
"You have the right to ask everything," he said. "Your sacrifice--yours
and Hildegarde's--made it possible for me to make Nora my wife. I owe
you----"
"Not your happiness, _armer Kerl_!" she interrupted sadly. "That was
what we wanted to give you, but we have not succeeded. And you must not
call it a sacrifice. We never do. You are just my only son, for whom
it is a joy to smooth the way as much as it lies in our power."
She knelt down beside him. All her proud severity had melted. Had she
shown a quarter of this tenderness to Nora, they would never have parted
as they had done. But then Nora had sinned against her rigid code of
honour; Nora deserved punishment--not tenderness.
"There is another thing I want to say, Wolff," she went on gently.
"Seleneck confessed to me that you had sold Bruno. I cannot understand
why you should have done so--unless you were short of money."
He turned away his head, avoiding her steady, questioning eyes.
"Won't you confide in me, Wolff--like you did in the old days?"
"Of course I will!" He tried to laugh. "Yes, it was money, Aunt Magda.
You see, I knew we were going to be invited to the Hulsons' to-morrow;
and Nora needed a new dress--and there were other expenses----
"Miles Ingestre, for instance?" she suggested bitterly.
"It was another mouth to feed," he admitted. "Nora's father doesn't
understand that we are not rich. He hears that we invite and are
invited, and so he thinks--naturally enough--that we can afford to keep
Miles for a few months. And Nora does not quite understand either; so I
sold Bruno to smooth things over."
He did not tell her what she none the less guessed--that many of Wolff's
scanty gold pieces had found their way into his guest's pockets by means
of the simple formula, "I'll pay you back as soon as the pater's cheque
arrives." Which event had, so far, never taken place.
Frau von Arnim rose and, going to her writing-table, drew out a thick
envelope, which she put in his hands.
"It is our gift to you," she said. "I have been keeping it for--for any
time when you might want a little extra, and I should like you to have
it now. Perhaps you could get Bruno back."
"I can't!" he protested almost angrily. "Do you think I do not know
what you have already given up for my sake--your friends, your home,
your comfort?"
"And do you not know that all has no value for me compared to the one
thing?" she answered, looking him steadily in the face. "I want you to
remember that, should any greater trouble come, any sacrifice would be
gladly borne rather than disgrace."
"Disgrace!" he echoed, with a stern contraction of the brows. "Of what
are you afraid, Aunt Magda?"
"I do not know. I only wanted your promise that you would always come
to me. As to this little gift"--her tone became lighter--"it would be
an insult to our relationship to refuse it. I cannot allow my nephew to
ride to war on an old charger. Surely you will allow me to throw this
sop to the family pride?"
So she laughed away his objections, and he sat there with drawn, white
face and looked about him, recognising the remnants of the old home,
knowing for whose sake it was that they had come to rest in these
narrow, gloomy confines. And, after all, it had been in vain. The
sacrifices had brought no one happiness. He rose to go, and as he did so
the door opened, and Hildegarde stood on the threshold. For a moment he
hardly recognised her. She held herself upright as he had not seen her
do for nearly three years; her cheeks were bright with colour and her
eyes with the old light, so that it seemed as though the time of
suffering had been blotted out of her life and she was once more his
gay, untroubled playfellow.
"Why, Hildegarde!" he cried delightedly.
She came laughing towards him and gave him her hand with a cheery
frankness. Neither by look nor tone did she betray that his presence
had set her pulses galloping with the old pain and the old happiness.
"Why, Wolff!" she repeated, mocking him. "Do you think I am a ghost?"
"A phoenix, rather," he retorted gaily, for his joy was unfeigned. "I
never dared to hope such good things of you. What has brought about the
miracle?"
She told him about the "cure" she had been through, still in the same
easy, unconcerned voice, and only her mother noticed the restless
movement of the long, thin hands. Perhaps it was that one sign of
emotion which prevented her from urging Wolff to remain. Perhaps she
knew, too, that Wolff was stifling in the narrow room.
"You must come back soon, Wolff," Hildegarde said, as he bade her
good-bye. "You have so much to tell us--about the war and our chances.
But I will let you go to-day. You look so tired."
She did not ask that Nora should come too. She did not even mention
Nora's name. Wolff remembered that significant omission as he trudged
homewards, and he understood that Nora stood alone. She had lost touch
with his friends and with those nearest to him, and he too had drifted
out of her life. Such, then, was the end of a love and a union which
was to have been endless! A few months of untroubled happiness, and the
awakening! He felt no anger mingle itself with his grief, rather an
intense pity. Though he could not understand her conduct in the past, he
trusted her with the blindness of an unchanged devotion. He believed
that she would have some explanation. He was sure that once at least
her love had been sincere, that she deceived herself more than she had
ever deceived him. She had believed her love for him stronger than that
for home and people, than any other love. She had been mistaken--that
was all. An old love had returned into her life and with it the old
ties. The intoxication of the first passion was over, and she had gone
back to those to whom she belonged, and a sea of racial prejudice,
racial differences, and national feeling divided her from the man to
whom she had sworn, "Thy God shall be my God, thy people my people." He
had lost her. What then? What was to be the solution to the problem
that lay before them both? He knew of none, and perhaps at the bottom
of his heart there was still a glimmer of hope that he was mistaken and
her friendship for Arnold no more than friendship, her change towards
him no more than a passing shadow. He told himself that when worried
and overworked as he was, a man can too easily exaggerate the extent of
a misfortune. Who knew what change for the better the next few hours
might bring?
Thus he reached his home with a lighter heart than he had expected.
Nora was not yet back from the parade. It surprised him, therefore, to
hear loud and apparently angry voices proceeding from his room. He
entered quickly, without waiting to lay sword or helmet aside, and found
Miles and another older man, whose appearance warranted the supposition
that his descent from the Mosaic family was unbroken.
Wolff looked from one to the other, and perhaps his knowledge of both
classes of men warned him of what was to come.
"Might I ask for an explanation?" he said quietly.
Miles was clinging to the back of a chair and trembling from head to
foot, either with fear or rage or a mixture of both. His usually sallow
face was now grey and his lips twitched convulsively before he managed
to answer.
"I'm beastly sorry, Wolff," he stammered. "It's the devil of a
nuisance, and I swear I never meant to bring you into the mess.
This--this man has come fussing about some money. I told him to wait,
but he seems to have got some idiotic ideas in his head----"
"The Herr Baron vill not blame me that I am anxious for my moneys," the
Jew interrupted, speaking also in broken English and giving Wolff the
benefit of a servile bow. "Dis genelman have borrowed much from me, and
I am a poor man. I vould not have took the risk but dat he gave me your
name as guarantee. He said dat you vere his broder-in-law and dat it
vere all safe. Dat is von month ago, and since den I have heard no more
of my genelman, but many English leave Berlin just now, and I come to
see if vat he say be true."
"It is perfectly true. Mr. Ingestre is my brother-in-law."
"Den I am satisfied. De Herr Baron vill see to it as officer and
genelman."
He took a step towards the door, but Wolff stopped him with a curt
gesture. Nor for a moment had he taken his eyes from Miles's colourless
and sickly countenance.
"You say that Mr. Ingestre owes you money," he said. "Will you be so
kind as to show me the bill?"
The Jew immediately produced a slip of greasy paper and handed it to
him. Wolff took it with the tip of his fingers, his eyes narrowing with
an irrepressible disgust. There was a moment's waiting silence. Miles's
eyes were riveted on the carpet, the Jew was taking an inventory of the
furniture, and neither saw Wolff's face. For that matter, save that the
lips beneath the short fair moustache had stiffened, there was no
noticeable change in his expression.
"Twelve hundred marks!" he said at last, throwing the paper on his
table. "Have you that sum by you, Miles? It would be better to pay
this gentleman at once."
Miles Ingestre started and glanced loweringly at his brother-in-law's
face. He suspected sarcasm, but Wolff's pitiless steel-grey eyes warned
him that the time for retort had not yet come.
"Eh--no; I'm afraid I haven't," he stammered. "I am expecting a cheque
from home, and of course will pay up at once. To tell you the
truth----"
His thin, hesitating voice died away into silence. Perhaps he felt that
Wolff had no desire to hear "the truth." He held his tongue, therefore,
and let events drift as they might. Wolff had taken Frau von Arnim's
envelope from his pocket. He opened it and counted twelve notes for a
hundred marks each on to the table.
"Kindly give me your receipt," he said.
The Jew obeyed willingly, scratching an untidy signature across the
bottom of the piece of paper which Wolff pushed towards him. With
greedy, careful fingers he counted the notes and stuffed them in his
pocket.
"It is a great pleasure to deal vid so great genelman," he said as he
shuffled to the door.
Wolff waited until he was gone, then he threw open the window as though
the atmosphere sickened him. When he turned again his expression was
still calm, only the narrowed eyes revealed something of what was
passing through his mind.
Miles did not look at him. He was playing with the paper-weight on the
table, struggling to regain his dignity. It bit into his mean soul that
he should be indebted to "this foreigner."
"It's awfully decent of you, Wolff," he broke out at last. "I'm really
awfully grateful, and of course as soon as my money comes----"
Wolff cut him short with an abrupt and contemptuous gesture.
"I ask for no promises," he said, "and make no claim on your gratitude.
What I have done was not done for your sake, but for Nora's and my own.
I do not wish the scandal of a disgraceful debt to be associated with my
name. No doubt you do not understand my point of view, and there is no
reason why I should explain it. There is one matter, however, on which
I have the right to demand an explanation. You have run through
something like L100 in the time that you have been here. Where has this
money gone?"
Miles shrugged his shoulders. The movement suggested that as between
one man of the world and another the question was superfluous.
"Oh, you know--the usual thing," he said. "Suppers, horses, and women.
The people I know all did it. It was pretty well impossible to keep out
of the swim."
Wolff detached his sword and seated himself at the table; Miles remained
standing, and Wolff did not suggest that he should change his position.
"That means probably that you have other debts," he said. "Is that so?"
"L100 goes nowhere," Miles answered sullenly. "I didn't know they would
come down on me so soon."
"You have a curious way of answering a question. Still, I fancy I
understand you. You will make a list of these other debts and lay them
before me. After that, you will return to England." He saw Miles's
start of anger, and went on deliberately: "You have associated with the
scum of Berlin, and therein I am perhaps to blame. I should have put an
end to it before you drifted thus far. But I was under the illusion
that at your age and as Nora's brother you would be capable of behaving
as a man of honour. Otherwise, I should never have allowed you in my
house."
He opened a drawer and began sorting out some papers before him, with
the same deliberation, indifferent to the look of intense hatred which
passed over his companion's face. "You have proved that you cannot rise
to so necessary a standard," he went on, "and therefore a prolongation
of your stay under my roof has become impossible. Nora must know
nothing of this, and there must be no fuss or scandal. You will write
this evening to your father and request him to telegraph for you
immediately--the possibility of war will be sufficient excuse. Until
your departure you will behave as usual, with the exception that you do
not leave the house. You will, of course, send your apologies to
General von Hulson for to-morrow evening. I do not wish you to accompany
us. That is all I have to say. You will do well to make no
difficulties."
Miles laughed angrily.
"Do you think I'd make difficulties if I could help it?" he demanded.
"I'd give ten years of my life to get back to England."
"There is no object in your making fate such a generous offer," was the
ironical reply. "Your debts here will be paid--somehow or other. The
road home is open to you."
"I can't go without money."
"Your passage will be paid for you."
"I don't mean that--I mean--there are reasons which make it impossible
for me to return--just now----"
Arnim swung round in his chair.
"You mean that you have debts in England?"
"Yes."
"In other words, that you left England on that account?"
Miles shrugged his shoulders.
"There were a good many reasons," he said.
There was a moment's silence. Arnim began to write with a studied calm.
"Your debts here will be paid on condition that you leave within
forty-eight hours," he said. "I cannot do more for you. I only do that
for Nora and for the sake of my own name."
Males leant forward over the table. He was not usually clever, but
hatred had made him clever enough to take the most cruel weapon that lay
within his reach.
"You talk as though I were such a beastly cad," he said, "but you shut
your eyes to the other things that go on in the house. You are
particular enough about your precious honour and name where I am
concerned; but you let Arnold come into the house and make love to your
wife without turning a hair."
"Miles, take care what you are saying!"
"I don't mind telling the truth. I have seen them----"
Wolff held up his hand, and there was something in the movement which
checked the flood of malice and treachery and sent Miles back a step as
though he had been struck.
"You can go," Wolff said quietly.
Again Miles wavered, torn between rage and cowardice. He hated this
iron-willed martinet with his strait-laced principles and intolerable
arrogance, but his fear was equal to his hatred, and after a moment he
turned and slunk from the room.
Arnim went on writing mechanically. His brain--the steeled, highly
trained brain--followed the intricate calculations before him with
unchanged precision, but the man himself fought with the poison in his
blood, and in the end conquered. As a strong swimmer he rose triumphant
above the waves of doubt, suspicion, and calumny which had threatened
him and held high above reach the shield of his wife's honour. It was
all that was left him--his trust in her, his belief in her integrity.
He knew that a crisis was at hand. With Miles's departure would come the
moment in which Nora would have to make her choice between the home and
people which he represented and her husband. How would she choose? The
hope that had comforted him before seemed all too desperate. Family and
country called her, and her love was the last frail bond which held her
to him. Would it hold good? Had it not perhaps already yielded? Was
she not already lost to him?
Yet, as he heard the door of the neighbouring room open and the sound of
her quick footsteps, the hot blood rushed to his face, his pulses beat
faster with the hope kindled to something that was almost a joyous
certainty. She was coming to him. He would see her standing irresolute
before him, and he would take her in his arms and by the strength of an
unconquerable love draw her back over the tide which was flowing faster
and broader between them. It was impossible that he should lose her,
impossible that the outward circumstances of their lives should be
stronger than themselves and what had been best in them--their love.
Even when the footsteps stopped and he remained alone, the
impossibility, absurdity of it all was still predominant over despair.
He rose and pulled open the door. He had no clear conception of any
plan. He was so sure that the moment they stood face to face she would
understand everything by some miracle of sympathy, the very thought of
an "explanation" was a sacrilege against the power with which he felt
himself possessed.
"Nora!" he cried joyfully. "Nora!"
She stood immediately opposite him. Her hat had been flung recklessly
on the table, and her hair was disordered, her face white and drawn.
She made no answer to his greeting. Her eyes met his with no light in
their depths. They were sombre, black, and sullen.
"Nora!" he repeated, and already the note of triumph had died out of his
voice. "What is the matter?"
She came at once to him, taking his hands, not in affection but in a
sort of feverish despair.
"Wolff," she said, "I want to go away from here--I want to go home!"
The moment of hope and enthusiasm was over. Something mysteriously cold
and paralysing had passed like an icy breath over his self-confidence
and changed it to a frigid despair. He could not even plead with her,
nor tell her of the love which he felt for her nor of the pain which he
suffered. Everything lay at the bottom of his heart a dead, frozen
weight. He loosened her hands from his arm and forced her gently into a
chair.
"You want to go away?" he said quietly. "Why?"
"Because I hate this place and--and every one."
"Does that include your home and your husband, Nora?"
She laughed wildly.
"My home! This isn't my home: it never has been. I have always been a
stranger--an exile here. Everything is foreign to me--everything
hateful. If you were twenty times my husband, I should say it. I loathe
and detest this country and I loathe and detest your people. I am
English. I was mad, mad, mad to believe I could ever be anything else!"
She was hysterical with fatigue and excitement, and scarcely conscious
of what she was saying. But Wolff, who knew nothing of what had
happened at the parade, heard in her words a deliberate and final
declaration.
"If you hate my country and my people, you must hate me," he said. "Has
it come to that already?"
She sprang to her feet as though goaded by some frightful inner torment.
"No, no, I don't hate you," she cried. "I love you at the bottom--at
least, I believe I do. I can't tell. Everything in me is in revolt and
uproar. I can't see you clearly as you are, as I love you. You are
just one of those others, one of those whom I detest as my deadliest
enemy. That is why I must go away. If I stayed, God knows, I believe I
should grow to hate you."
Every trace of colour faded out of his face, but he did not speak, and
she ran to him and clasped his arm with the old reckless pleading.
"Let me go!" she begged. "Let me go home! Things will be better then.
I shall quiet down. I shan't be so constantly maddened and irritated as
I am now. I shall have time to think. Wolff, I _must_ go!"
"If you go now, it will be for ever," he said steadily. "The woman who
leaves her husband and her country in the time of danger sacrifices the
right to return."
"Wolff!" Her hands sank to her side. She stared at him blankly,
horror-stricken.
"You must see that for yourself," he went on in the same tone of rigid
self-control. "If war breaks out and you return to England, you can
never come back here as my wife. I am a German and an officer, and the
woman who shares my life must share my duty. That is the law. It is a
just and right one. Husband and wife cannot be of different factions.
They must stand together under the same flag. In marrying me you
accepted my country as your own. If you leave me now, you are turning
traitor, and there must be no traitors amongst us."
He put the case before her with pitiless logic, more overwhelming than
the fiercest outburst of passion. The hysterical excitement died out of
her face.
"A traitor!" she repeated dully. "How can I be that? How can any one
give up their country?"
"I do not know," he answered, "and therefore whatever you choose I shall
not blame you. I only show you the inevitable consequences."
"Wolff, I can't stay here. Everybody hates me. I can't hide what I
feel. You don't know the things I have done--and said. I--I insulted
some one this afternoon."
"It can all be lived down," he returned. "People will forgive and
understand, if you stand by us."
"But I can't--not in my heart of hearts. Wolff, if war breaks out, I
shall be praying for your ruin--yes, in your very churches I shall pray
for it. Perhaps my prayers will direct the very bullet that kills
you----"
Her voice shook with a kind of smothered horror, which stirred the cold
weight in his heart to pity.
"Hush, Nora, hush! That is all exaggerated feeling. It is hard for you,
but you must choose. Either you must sacrifice your country or your
husband. That is the simple issue."
"Why should _I_ bring the sacrifice?" she retorted. "Why must _I_ be the
one to give up everything that I was taught to love and honour next to
God? If you love me, leave the army, leave Germany! Let us go
away--anywhere--and be happy together!"
"Nora!"
"You see!" she exclaimed with bitter triumph. "That is too much to ask
from you!"
"I am a soldier," he said.
"Then I would to God I had been born to so easy a profession!"
She turned away, battling with the fierce, angry sobs that choked her.
The next instant his arms were about her. There was no hope and no joy
in his embrace. He held her as he might have done in the midst of
shipwreck and before the approach of death.
"Do you think it is easy to put before you the choice--knowing what you
will choose?" he asked.
"Knowing----?" she stammered.
"You do not love me enough to stand by me."
"That is not true!"
She freed herself and took a step back, searching his face as though to
find there an answer to some agonising doubt.
"That is not true," she repeated breathlessly.
He lifted his hand in stern warning.
"Think, Nora! We stand, you and I, at the parting of the ways. Make
your choice honestly--I shall not blame you. But once you have chosen,
there must be no turning back. If you choose to follow me, it must be
to the bitter end of your duty. You must curse my enemies and bless my
friends. Otherwise there can be no peace and happiness between us. If
you choose your country--and those others whom you love--you shall go to
them. I shall keep you in my heart until I die, but I will never see
you again."
In spite of his strongest effort, his voice shook, and that one signal
from the depths of his despair called forth the one and only answer of
which her headlong, passionate nature was capable. She flung herself
into his arms, clinging to him in a storm of grief and pity.
"With God's help, I will stand by you to the end, my husband!"
For a long minute he held her to him, and then gradually he felt how her
whole frame relaxed and her arms sank powerless to her side. He looked
down into her face. It was very pale, and a faint, childlike smile of
utter weariness hovered round the half-open lips.
"I am so tired, Wolff," she said under her breath, "so tired!"
Without answering, he bore her to the sofa and laid her with a clumsy
tenderness among the cushions. But he did not speak again. For the
moment the conflict was over; a truce had been called between them.
Only his instinct knew it was no more than that. Thus he knelt down
silently beside her, and with her hand still clasped in his watched over
her as she slept.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*THE CODE OF HONOUR*
Nora stood before the long glass in the drawing-room and studied herself
with a listless interest. The expensive white chiffon dress which Wolff
had given her for the occasion became her well, and at another time she
might have found an innocent pleasure in this contemplation of her own
picture. But she was exhausted, spiritually and physically. The storm
of the day before had shattered something in her--perhaps her youth--and
she saw in the mirror only the pale face and heavy eyes, and before her
in the near future an evening of outward gaiety and inward trial. That
which she had once sought after with feverish desire--magnificence and
contact with the great world where stuffy flats and poverty were
unknown--had become her poison. She shrank instinctively, like some
poor invalid, from all noise and movement. She would have been thankful
to be able to lie down and sleep and forget, but Duty, that grim fetish
to which she had sworn obedience, demanded of her that she should laugh
and seem merry beneath the critical, questioning eyes of those who
to-morrow might be fighting against her people.
Miles was lying in his usual attitude on the sofa, watching her. He had
been curiously quiet the whole day, keeping to the house and avoiding
Arnim with an increased shyness. Nora believed that she understood him.
She did not see that his young face was sallow and lined with
dissipation, nor that his furtive eyes were heavy and bloodshot. She
saw in him only the brother, the Englishman, and that one fact of his
nationality covered him with a cloak, hiding from her all that was
pitiable and contemptible, lending him a dignity, a worthiness that was
not his. So also she interpreted his general conduct and his abrupt
refusal to accompany her to the Hulsons' ball. She felt that he was
awaiting the hour of departure to his own country, chafing at the bonds
which held him, and that, like a true Englishman, he shrank from all
further association with his future enemies. She honoured him for
it--she envied him for it; but she dreaded her own loneliness. She came
to his side and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.
"I wish you were coming too," she said, "for my sake, not for yours."
"I can't," he retorted sullenly.
"No, I know. I was not going to try and persuade you. I understand so
well how you feel. Oh, Miles, you must go back to England--we must
manage it somehow. I shall tell Wolff to-night. Things can't be worse
than they are--and perhaps he will help."
Miles Ingestre looked at her keenly. An expression that was half
cunning, half amused lifted the moody shadows from his face. It was
obvious that she did not know what had passed between Wolff and himself,
and it was not his intention to tell her. His promise to Wolff on the
subject did not weigh with him--he had other and better reasons for
keeping silence. In the first place, he had no wish to awaken any sense
of gratitude towards her husband in Nora's heart; in the second, he
still needed money.
"You need not worry him with my debts," he said carelessly. "They can
wait, and anyhow they wouldn't keep me in Berlin. The difficulty is on
the other side."
"In England?"
"Yes; I must have ready money somehow. I can't go back until the way
has been cleared a little." He pulled himself up on to his elbow.
"Look here, Nora, you could help me if you wanted. Wolff can't and
won't do anything, but there's Bauer. You don't need to look so
shocked--he's told me himself that he would do me a good turn, only his
sister-in-law has the purse-strings, and you have rather offended her.
If you went to her ball on the 18th----"
"Miles, it is impossible! You don't know----"
"I only know that if you don't help me I shall be in a bad fix. When
the war breaks out----"
"Is war certain?"
"Unless they funk it. I believe the ambassador has his trunks packed
and his carriage waiting."
Nora made a gesture of mingled impatience and despair.
"Why must there be war?" she cried. "Why can't we leave each other
alone? What is there to quarrel about?"
"Nothing!" Miles retorted. "The whole thing is got up. The beggars
want more than is good for them, and we've got to keep them in their
places. That's the gist of the matter. It has to come sooner or
later."
Nora was silent. His words, with their unvaried mingling of scorn and
pride, aroused in her an equally mingled feeling of irritation and
sympathy. Why was he so sure of victory, why so scornful of "these
foreigners"? What right had he to be either contemptuous or arrogant?
What right had she to share those feelings with him, even if only in the
secret places of her heart?
"By the way," Miles went on, watching her intently. "What's the matter
with you and poor old Arnold? He has been here twice to-day, and you
have been so-called 'out' each time. I got a note from him asking what
was up. It's pretty rough luck on him, as he wants to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?" Nora repeated. She had started perceptibly, and Miles
grinned.
"He has marching orders, and is leaving to-morrow night. I bet he would
have gone days ago if it hadn't been--well, for some one!"
"Miles, I will not have you talk like that!"
She had turned on him scarlet with anger and humiliation, but Miles only
burst out laughing.
"You need not get into such a rage, sweet sister mine! I didn't say it
was you, though if the cap fits----" He broke off into a sulky silence.
Wolff had entered. He was in full dress, and bespattered with mud, as
though he had returned from an arduous ride. In one hand he carried a
dispatch case. One glance at his face showed them that he controlled a
strong excitement.
"I am awfully sorry, Nora," he said hurriedly, "it is impossible for me
to accompany you. I have been driven from pillar to post the whole day,
and now I have some work which will take me the whole night. You must
give my excuses to General von Hulson. He will understand why it is. A
good many officers will be absent for the same reason."
"Then I must go alone?" she asked.
Absorbed as he was, he heard the reproach and annoyance.
"Do you mind that?"
"I shall hate it!" she said emphatically.
The word "hate," with all its too recent associations, caused him to
look at her closely. He saw that she had lost her pallor, and that the
old defiant light burnt in her eyes.
"Perhaps it would be better, then, if Miles accompanied you," he said.
"There is still time."
"I do not wish Miles to do anything he objects to," she returned coldly.
"No doubt he has his reasons for not going."
Wolff's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.
"No doubt," he said, glancing in Miles's direction; "but perhaps if I
added my appeal to yours he would consent to overcome--his reasons."
Miles rose sullenly to his feet.
"If you want it--of course," he mumbled.
Wolff nodded absently. He went into his room, closed the door, leaving
Nora alone. There had been an expression of anxiety on his face which
did not, however, excuse his apparent indifference in Nora's eyes, and
she stood frowning after him, puzzled and deeply wounded. But she made
no attempt to follow him. The scene of the previous evening had been a
last effort; she was too weary, too hopeless to strive again after a
reunion which seemed already an impossibility.
Twenty minutes later Miles reappeared in the full glory of his evening
clothes. Nora was surprised--perhaps a little disappointed--to observe
that his spirits had risen.
"The carriage is waiting," he said. "Hurry up, or we shall be late."
Nora hesitated. A superstitious clinging to an old custom led her to
the threshold of Wolff's room. She tried the handle of the door without
effect, and when she turned away again her cheeks were scarlet.
"Locked, eh?" Miles said. "I bet he's afraid of us catching sight of
his papers. Arnold said some of those staff fellows have the handling
of pretty valuable stuff."
Nora gave no attention to his words, though she was destined to remember
them. She led the way down the narrow stairs into the street where the
cab was waiting for them, and a minute later they were rattling out of
the little by-street into the busy thoroughfare.
It seemed to Nora that the crowds were denser than usual, that a curious
unrest was written on the usually placid, cheerful faces that flashed
past the open carriage window. She remembered Wolff's expression as he
had entered the room; she felt now that it had been the unconscious
reflection from those other faces, and that the one invisible bond of
sympathy which unites all men of the same race had passed on the flame
of patriotism from one to another, till in all these thousands there
burned, above every meaner passion, the supreme _Vaterlandsliebe_. Only
_she_ felt nothing, nothing--though she was bound to them by oath--save
fear and horror. She felt alone, deserted. Miles was the one being in
the whole seething crowd who felt as she felt, who suffered as she
suffered. She turned to him with an impulsive tenderness. He was not
looking out of the window, but staring straight before him, with his low
forehead puckered into thoughtful lines.
"It's a queer thing," he said, as though he felt her questioning glance.
"Here we both are in a foreign country, mixing with people whom we shall
be blowing up to-morrow, and to-day not moving a finger to harm them,
just because the word has not been given, as it were. If I threw a bomb
amongst all those big-wigs to-night, who knows what victories I might
prevent?--and yet I suppose it would be murder. And then, there is
Wolff stewing over papers that, I bet, the English War Office would give
a few thousands just to look at; you and I sit and watch him and never
move a hand."
"What do you expect us to do?" she returned listlessly.
"Nothing, I suppose."
The rest of the drive passed in silence, and once in the ball-room, Nora
lost sight of her brother completely. He drifted off by himself,
whither and with whom she could not think, for she knew that he had no
friends in the brilliant crowd. She, too, was friendless, though there
were many there who bowed to her and passed on, and for the first time
she realised the full extent of her isolation. The Selenecks were not
there, and she was glad of their absence: she would have hated them to
have been witnesses of her loneliness. Those whom she knew, whose
comradeship with her husband should have guaranteed a certain courtesy,
passed her by. Nora cared nothing for them, but the humiliation stung
her to the quick. She was English, and because she was English they
insulted her, tacitly and deliberately. Not all the months in her
husband's country had taught her to understand that she had insulted
them, that she had trampled on their pride of race, and scorned the
customs and opinions which were their holiest possessions. It never
occurred to her that the description of the scene of the previous
afternoon had passed from lip to lip with the rapidity of lightning, and
that in the eyes of that mighty brotherhood of soldiers, and of that
still mightier sisterhood of their wives, she was branded as a renegade,
as a woman who had spat upon her husband's uniform, and exalted another
race above that to which she belonged--a _Deutschfeindliche_, an enemy
who masqueraded among them under a transparent guise of hypocritical
friendship. Perhaps some pitied her; but for the most part they were
the older men, whose experience taught them to be pitiful--and they were
not present on this particular night. Even if they had been they could
have done nothing to help her. She was an outcast, and for them she had
made herself "unclean." Thus poor Nora, still young and headstrong in
all her emotions, her sensibilities raw with the events of the last
weeks, stood alone and watched the scene before her with eyes from which
the tears were held back by the strength of pride alone.
There must have been considerably over two hundred guests present,
almost exclusively officers of lower rank, with here and there a
civilian to throw the brilliant uniforms into more striking relief.
Nora could not but be impressed by the tall, finely built men, with the
strong-cut, bronzed faces, and in each she saw a dim reflection of her
husband. There was perhaps no real resemblance, but they were of one
type--they were German, and that one similarity aroused in her the old
feeling of wild opposition against the man she loved, and whom she had
sworn to stand by to the end. Her love for him was as genuine as her
admiration for these, his brothers--as genuine as her hatred for him and
for them all.
In the midst of her bitter reflections she heard a voice speak to her,
and, turning, found Bauer at her side. She had expected him the whole
evening, and her humiliation deepened as she saw the cynical
satisfaction in his eyes. She knew that he was triumphing in the belief
that he had won, that in her loneliness she would turn to him, and the
knowledge changed her misery to a desperate pride.
"Well, _gnaedige Frau_," he said. She made no answer, and his smile
broadened. "You see, I am very punctual," he went on. "I have come for
my answer. What is it to be?"
"I gave it you once," she returned. "Is that not enough?"
"Circumstances can alter the most determined. Are you not tired of this
Pharisaical crowd, who pretend to look upon you as dirt because you do
not pronounce their shibboleth as it pleases them? Are you not ready now
to come amongst friends who wish you well--who would help you? You have
only to say the word."
She looked about her, feeling her isolation like an icy wind, and for an
instant knew temptation. How easy it would be to yield! What, after
all, had he asked of her?--her friendship, common politeness for the
woman who had shown her kindness. What had he offered her? His help
and support in her loneliness and need. Then she remembered--and the
temptation passed.
"My answer remains the same, Herr Rittmeister."
His face became suffused with a dull red.
"_Gnaedige Frau_, take care! It is not only your brother who will
suffer for your decision!"
She heard the angry threat in his voice, and a feeling of contempt and
aversion, almost physical in its intensity, came over her. She looked
about her, half unconsciously seeking some way of escape. Miles was
nowhere to be seen. Her eyes flashed rapidly over the crowd, picking
out the black evening coats, and then for the first time she saw Arnold.
She went to meet him, regardless of prudence, of the rage in Bauer's
eyes, of the malice and suspicion that watched her from every side. She
only knew that a friend had come to her in the midst of enemies, and
that she was no longer alone.
"Oh, Robert!" she cried. "How glad I am to see you! How did you manage
to come here?"
"The Ambassador got me the invitation," he said, taking her hand in his
strong clasp. "God knows it isn't the time to seek such hospitality,
but I had to see you somehow, Nora, before I went."
"Let us get away from this crowd," she said hurriedly. "We can't talk
here."
He gave her his arm and led her to one of the supper-tables that were
placed beneath the gallery.
"We can pretend to want coffee, or something of the sort," he said. "No
one will disturb us."
She looked across and smiled at him with a fleeting radiance. Oh, that
English voice, that English face! Laughter of relief and thankfulness
fought with the tears that had so long lain checked, and now struggled
for release beneath the touch of a friend's unspoken sympathy.
"Nora, what is wrong?" he went on. "Why wouldn't you see me? Have I
offended you in any way?"
"Offended me!" She laughed brokenly. "Do I look offended, Robert?
Don't you know I could have danced for joy when I saw you coming?"
Reckless Nora! Her words, spoken in a moment of relief from an
agonising pressure, had not the meaning which he believed he read out of
them. Something was not any longer so selfless, so resigned, flashed
into his steady grey eyes.
"Then what is it, Nora? Tell me everything. You know you have promised
me your friendship."
She did not hesitate an instant. Those three hours beneath the enemy's
fire had driven her to exasperation, to that point of hysterical
nervousness from which most feminine folly is committed.
"They forbade my seeing you," she said--"not in words; but they said
things which left me no choice. They said I was bringing disgrace upon
my husband, and upon his name----"
"Nora! Who said that?"
"Frau von Arnim. She hates me. And Wolff said much the same. They
can't understand a straight, honest friendship between a man and a
woman."
"You mean it was because of me?"
"Yes. Of course Frau von Arnim knows everything about--about the past,
and she believes--oh, it is too horrid what she believes. We don't need
to think about it. She has not told Wolff. If she had he would have
turned me out of the house or locked me up in the cellar. None of
them--not even he--can understand. Oh, Robert, you don't know how hard
it was to have to send you away! You and Miles are the only people in
all this big city to whom I can turn."
Arnold sat silent, staring in front of him. His pulses were beating
with a growing, suffocating excitement. He knew by every tone of her
voice, by every glance of her stormy, miserable eyes, that she was in
his power, that he had but to make the appeal and she would follow him
out of the room whithersoever he led her. The knowledge touched his
steady-flowing blood with fever--in the same moment he was conscious of
remorse and shame. He had lingered at her side against every behest of
wisdom and honour, deceiving himself and her with an assumption of
loyal, disinterested friendship. It was no friendship. Those who had
judged it by another name had judged rightly. He had come between
husband and wife, he was at that very moment, willingly or unwillingly,
playing the part of tempter in the devil's comedy.
"Nora," he began, "perhaps I have done you harm. Perhaps I ought not to
have come to-night."
"I don't care!" she retorted recklessly. "I don't care whether anything
is right or wrong. When you came I was desperate. I hate every one
here. It is awful to feel that I belong to them. I want to get away
from here--home, to England."
"Nora--for God's sake!" He was frightened now--of her and of himself.
"You must not talk like that. Your home is here with your husband."
"It is not!" she retorted, in the same low, trembling voice. "It is in
England--it can never be anywhere else. Oh, you don't know what I
suffer!"
"I can guess. Why don't you tell Wolff everything? Why don't you
confide in him?"
Everything in him revolted against his own words. They were spoken, not
out of innermost conviction, but as a stern tribute to his honour, and
the principles which were bred into his bone and blood.
"I have," she said, "but it was of no good. He could not help me--no
one can. It is as he said--one must choose."
"Poor child!"
"I deserve it all. It is my punishment. I did wrong in marrying Wolff,
I did wrong to make you suffer. And now I suffer----"
"Nora!" An immense tenderness crept into his voice. He heard it, and
the next moment he had regained his self-control. He was ashamed of the
role he had been about to play. "We must bear our lot," he said
sternly.
The waltz, under cover of which their rapid conversation had taken
place, died into silence, and close upon the momentary hush that
followed, they heard the dull thud of a falling body, a crash of glass
and a low hubbub, above which one loud angry voice was distinctly
audible. Nora started to her feet. Whether she had recognised that
voice, or whether she was led by some instinct, she did not know. Her
heart was beating with fear and excitement.
"Something has happened!" she exclaimed. "Quick!"
Arnold followed her in the direction whence the sounds came. In one of
the adjoining alcoves a little group of officers had collected, and as
they approached near enough to see what was happening, Arnold turned to
Nora and tried to draw her on one side.
"Don't go!" he said. "It is some silly quarrel! Let me see to it."
"No, no!" she returned hoarsely, and pushed forward to the outside of
the circle. She saw Miles standing by the table; he was leaning on it
as though for support, his dress was disordered, his features crimson
with drink and passion. A young officer had hold of him by the arm and
was evidently trying to hold him back. A few feet away Bauer was
rearranging his collar, with an assumption of contemptuous calm. A red
scar upon his cheek told its own story.
"You d----d liar!" Miles shrieked in English, struggling against the
detaining hold upon his arm. "If it wasn't that they protected you I'd
thrash you within an inch of your life!"
His opponent smiled scornfully.
"I do not care for boxing-matches in a ball-room." he said, "not even
with an intoxicated Englishman. Captain von Ebberstein, I should be very
glad if you would represent me in this matter."
The one elderly officer present bowed, and approached Miles, whom he
also saluted with a faultless formality, which contrasted strikingly
with the other's unsteady, excited movements.
"Perhaps the gentleman would kindly name his seconds," he said, speaking
in broken English. "The continuation of this affair can then be
arranged on a more becoming occasion."
Arnold tried to loosen Nora's grasp upon his arm.
"I must get him out of this somehow," he whispered. "They are trying to
force him into a duel."
Miles, however, gave him no time to interfere.
"What the devil do you mean?" he demanded.
The officer shrugged his shoulders.
"You felt yourself wounded in your honour and have avenged yourself by
insulting this officer here. That can have but one meaning."
"I swear I don't know what you are talking about!"
"There are certain injuries for which there is but one remedy," was the
cold explanation.
A light seemed to dawn over Miles's scarlet face. He burst into a high,
wavering laugh.
"You think I am going to fight a duel? You think I'm going to make such
a d----d fool of myself?" he demanded thickly.
The officers looked at each other in contemptuous silence. Bauer smiled
and turned aside, as though to spare himself the sight of so profound a
humiliation. Captain von Ebberstein alone retained his expression of
profound gravity.
"A gentleman is expected to give satisfaction," he said.
"I don't care what you expect," was Miles's retort. "I'll have nothing
to do with such infernal nonsense. He lied, and I choked the lie down
his throat, and there's an end to the matter!"
"On the contrary, it is the beginning."
"I think differently."
Bauer advanced. He was swinging his white kid glove carelessly
backwards and forwards, and there was the same scornful smile about his
lips. At the same moment his eyes fell on Nora's face, and the smile
deepened with malicious satisfaction.
"In that case, it is my duty to inform you that you are neither a
gentleman nor a man of honour," he said. "As such, and as a coward, you
will feel no objection to my expressing my feelings--thus!"
He flung the glove full into Miles's face.
There was a moment of expectant silence. Miles appeared to ignore what
had happened. The temporary excitement was over, and the wine was
beginning to numb his senses with the first touch of drowsiness. It was
Arnold's opportunity. He pushed through the little circle and took
Miles firmly by the arm.
"Let me pass!" he said to those about him. "This gentleman is my
friend."
Miles yielded passively, and no one made any effort to detain him. The
group fell back on either side, as they would have done from people
infected with disease, and Arnold guided the wavering Miles across the
ballroom. The floor was empty, and Nora felt she must sink beneath the
hundreds of eyes that watched them. Yet she carried herself haughtily,
and the one thought that flashed clearly through her mind, as the great
glass doors swung behind her, was that she was free--that, come what
would, she could never see those people again. The last possibility of
her existence amongst them was destroyed. Further than that she refused
to think.
The drive home was an absolutely silent one. Miles, yielding to the
influence of champagne and the late excitement, fell into a disturbed
doze, from which Arnold and Nora made no attempt to arouse him. They sat
opposite each other in the half-light, avoiding each other's eyes.
Thus they reached the gloomy little house which was Nora's home.
"I had better help him upstairs," Arnold said quietly. "We must make as
little fuss as possible."
Nora consented with a brief inclination of the head. She was past all
struggle against circumstances. Between them they succeeded in piloting
Miles up the endless flights. He seemed, quite unconscious of his
state, and talked loudly and incessantly, so that all hope of bringing
him to his room unobserved was doomed as vain. Nevertheless, stunned
and indifferent as she was, Nora started back involuntarily as Wolff met
them in the passage. He carried a candle in his hand, and the light
reflected on his pale, exhausted face fell also on Miles, and revealed
enough of the truth. He glanced away at Nora, and from Nora to Arnold.
His expression betrayed no feeling, but she felt that he was trying to
read into the very depths of their souls.
"Please come in here," he said quietly.
He led the way into the drawing-room and switched on the light, and they
followed him without protest.
"Tell me what happened," he commanded.
Arnold made a movement as though he would have spoken, but Wolff stopped
him with a courteous but decided gesture.
"I wish Miles to tell me--if he can," he said.
Miles lifted his hanging head. A silly self-satisfaction twisted his
unsteady lips.
"I can tell you right enough," he said, "only I'll sit down, if you
don't mind, I feel so infernally shaky. It was Bauer, you know. I was
having my supper when I heard him and another fellow talking, and though
I'm not good at the jargon I caught the drift of what he was saying. It
was about a woman. He said if he were her husband he would make an end
of such a dirty scandal, and put a bullet through some one or other's
head. You can fancy that I pricked up my ears, and I turned and saw
that he was pointing at Nora and Arnold. That was too much for me. I
got up and asked what he meant. He told me--and I swear it wasn't nice.
He said----"
Wolff lifted his hand.
"I don't want to hear that," he said. "Go on."
"Well, I knocked him down, and there was the devil of a row!" Miles
laughed unsteadily. "The silly fools wanted me to fight a duel over
it!" he added.
"And you----?"
"I told them I wasn't going to make such a d----d idiot of myself."
Wolff said nothing for a moment. His whole face had stiffened, and he
was looking at Miles from head to foot.
"And after that they called you a coward?" he asked, at last.
"Some rot like that----"
"And they were right. You are a coward--the vilest, most pitiful coward
I have ever met."
"Wolff!"
It was Nora who had cried out. The insult had fallen on her brother and
herself alike, and her voice shook with passionate indignation.
Her husband turned to her.
"The man who is not ready to risk his life for his sister's honour _is_
a coward," he asserted deliberately.
A gesture of protest escaped Arnold, who had hitherto remained silent
and motionless.
"You forget," he said. "In England we do not duel--it is not our
custom."
"No; you go to law and take money for your injured honour," was the
coldly scornful answer. "That is the revenge of shopkeepers--not of
gentlemen."
The two men measured each other in painful electric silence, and as they
stood there face to face, the contrast between them marked them as two
great types of two great races. The thin, loosely built Englishman,
with the long, gaunt features, confronted the German, whose broad
shoulders and massive head seemed to make him taller than his opponent.
Perhaps some vague notion of the conflict which they represented dawned
in Nora's mind. She looked from one to the other, terrified of the
forces behind the masks of stern self-repression, and instinctively
weighing them in a mental balance. For the first time in their married
life she was afraid of her husband. It seemed to her that his height
and breadth had increased in the last moments; there was something
gigantic in the stature, and something bulldog, tenacious, and yet
keenly alive, powerfully intellectual in the face, with its square chin
and massive forehead. Compared with him, Arnold, tall and wiry though he
was in reality, appeared enfeebled, almost fragile. If the two men had
fallen upon each other in that moment--the very possibility sickened
Nora's heart with fear. She had seen Arnold's hands clench themselves
as Wolff's scornful criticism had been uttered, and involuntarily she
had taken a quick step forward as though to fling herself between them.
But there was no need for interference. Both men possessed admirable
self-control, and in that moment at least they respected each other.
"We have our own opinions on these matters," Arnold said. "You have
yours. Mr. Ingestre is an Englishman, and does not need to conform to
your customs. He gave his opponent the lie, and has done all that he
need do."
"So you have said," Wolff returned calmly. "In my eyes, and in the eyes
of my world, there is still much to be done. But that--as the one
German here--concerns me alone." He turned to Miles, who was still
seated, his face in his hands, apparently dozing. "Go to your room!" he
commanded peremptorily. The tone of almost brutal authority acted like a
goad on Nora's tortured nerves.
"You speak to my brother as though he were a dog!" she burst out.
Wolff did not answer her.
"Go to your room!" he repeated.
Miles staggered to his feet and tottered across to the door. He seemed
to be obeying the hypnotising power of Wolff's voice, for his movements
were those of a sleep-walker.
"Good night, every one!" he mumbled. "Good night!"
No one responded. The two men again faced each other.
"I am grateful to you for the assistance you rendered my wife," Wolff
said. "We shall scarcely meet again."
"Not here, at any rate," was the significant answer.
A curt salute, and Arnold turned away. He gave Nora his hand.
"Good-bye--and God bless you!" he said.
Her lips moved soundlessly. For an instant it seemed almost as though
she clung to him. Then her hand fell listlessly to her side, and the
next minute he too had gone.
Husband and wife did not speak. Nora seated herself at the table and
buried her face in her arms. She cried without restraint, not loudly,
but with low, monotonous, terrible sobs.
Her husband crossed to the door of his room. He stood there a moment,
his head bowed, listening. It was as though he were receiving some
final message from those sounds of piteous self-abandonment. But he did
not look at Nora. He went out, and the soft click of the lock pierced
through her grief, so that she started upright.
She saw that the door was closed, and that she was alone.
*CHAPTER XV*
*THE SEA BETWEEN*
To reach Wolff's study it was necessary to pass through the
drawing-room. On his way, therefore, Captain von Seleneck encountered
Nora, who was seated at her table writing. He bowed, she answered with
a slight inclination of the head and he passed on, as a total stranger
might have done, into the inner sanctuary.
He found Wolff at work on some nearly finished plans. He was standing
over them, and with a compass measuring distances with a careful,
painstaking exactitude, and his face, as he looked up, though haggard
almost beyond belief, was absolutely determined, without trace of
weakness.
The two men shook hands and Wolff went on working.
"It was good of you to come, Kurt," he said. "I know you must be
overburdened with duty just now."
"One has always time for a comrade, and especially for you," was the
answer; "and whether you had sent for me or not, I should have
come--like a bird of ill-omen. I felt I owed it to you as your friend,
and you would rather have it from me than from another man. It seems,
though, you know all about last night?"
"Quite enough."
"It was a wretched affair," Seleneck said, placing his helmet on the
table. "I got it from an eye-witness. Of course, your precious
brother-in-law had had too much to drink. That was inevitable, and
might have been hushed up. But then came the row with Bauer. It was
obvious that Bauer was on the look-out for mischief, and I should like
to give Mr. Ingestre the credit for knocking him down as a return for
what he said about your wife. Unfortunately, the real subject of
dispute was--money."
Wolff nodded.
"How did you hear of it?" he asked.
"Ebberstein came straight to me. It was rather decent of him. He knew,
of course, that I was your friend, and the best person to tell you what
had happened. It was obvious that you had to be told. You see--it was
not only your brother-in-law. Your--wife's name and--and honour were
dragged in."
Wolff's lips tightened.
"I know," he said. "Go on!"
"Well, we talked it over, and I promised to come round to you directly I
was free. When I got back this morning I found your letter waiting for
me, and here I am!" He laid his hand with an affectionate movement on
his comrade's shoulder. "Whatever it is--I'm your man," he said.
"I know, _alter Junge_. You have always stuck to me. You were the one
man in all Berlin to whom I felt I could turn with real confidence. By
the way, I suppose I may leave the arrangement of things in your hands?"
"I shall be proud to act for you, Wolff. To all intents and purposes
everything is settled. Ebberstein and I talked it over last night. In
the almost certain event of your challenging, we decided that a Court of
Honour should sit this evening in my house and that the meeting should
take place at the latest to-morrow morning. It is impossible to know
when we shall have marching-orders, so there must be no delay. If you
wish it, I shall proceed at once to Bauer and find out whom he intends
to appoint as seconds. The rest of the formalities you can safely
entrust to me."
"Thank you. When is the Court of Honour appointed to sit?"
"If it can be managed, at six o'clock. The circumstances are simple
enough, so that the conditions should be very quickly settled. You, of
course, are the challenging party, and the matter will come under the
head of '_schwere Beleidigung_,' so that ten paces will be about the
outcome. Are you good at that distance?"
"Pretty well."
"Ebberstein says your man is a first-class shot. _Es heisst aufpassen_,
Wolff!"
Arnim made no answer and his companion took up his helmet.
"I shall come round to you this evening as soon as the Court's decision
has been given," he said.
Wolff looked up quickly.
"If you don't mind, I would prefer to come to you," he said. "And if I
might, I will stay the night at your house. It would be better. I do
not want my wife to know anything of what is to happen."
"But--_Menschenkind_! She _must_ know!"
"She suspects nothing. You forget--she is not one of us. She does not
understand."
Seleneck stared thoughtfully in front of him, pulling his moustache as
though a prey to some painful uneasiness.
"Of course I hope the very best for you, Wolff," he said, at last, "but
you are a big man, and unlucky accidents happen. It would be pretty
hard on your wife if she knew nothing and----"
"It would be a shock," interrupted Wolff quietly. "I know that. Believe
me, though, what I have arranged is for the best. She would not
understand."
Seleneck asked none of the questions that were burning the tip of his
tongue. A natural delicacy, above all, his comrade's face, held him
silent, and it was Wolff who continued after a moment:
"In the event of what you call an 'unlucky accident' my wife will, of
course, return to her own country. Her brother is starting for England
to-morrow, so that she will be able to accompany him. But in any
case--whether I fall or not--I beg of you to do your utmost to shield
her from all trouble--and scandal. She is innocent--absolutely
innocent. I know--you cannot hide it from me--that you and all the rest
blame her. She is not to be blamed because she married a man not of her
own people. She is to be profoundly pitied. That is all, and it
explains everything."
"You talk as though you were certain of the worst," Seleneck said. "But
if everything goes well--what then?"
The compasses slipped from Wolff's fingers.
"God knows!" he said.