About two weeks from the time of the unwelcome visit to her of Prince
Khris, the Duchess of Otterbourne, descending the terrace steps of her
hotel, met, as he ascended them, young Woffram of Karstein.
“How dull you look!” she said to him. “What on earth is the matter? Are
you going to enliven us with a sensational suicide?”
The young man smiled, but with no mirth in his smile.
“Something horrible has happened, though not a suicide,” he answered
sadly. “My poor granduncle Khris, the one who came to you the other
day, has fallen down in a fit at the rouge-et-noir table yonder.”
With a gesture toward the east he indicated Monte Carlo, which lay in
the distant curves of the coast.
“Is he dead?” she said eagerly.
“No. But he is dying. Hugo von Börn told me. He has just come from
there. He saw it.”
“You seem singularly afflicted!” said Mouse with a little laugh to
conceal the impression which the news made on herself.
“Well,” said Prince Woffram with embarrassment, “the death of a good
man, you know, isn’t half so shocking as the death of a bad one.”
“Indeed?” said Mouse. “I should have thought just the contrary. But
then I don’t see things by the light of the Lutheran religion! Where
did Prince Khris live? Who had he with him? Who will look after him?”
“I fear he is past looking after. Where his lodgings were I don’t know;
they were something very poor, for all his money went at the tables. I
think--don’t you think?--I ought to go and see if I can do anything for
him?”
“But your people don’t know him, you say?”
“No; but when an old man is dying things seem different. I think I
ought to go.”
“Telegraph for your father’s permission,” said Mouse, leaning against
the balustrade and playing with her long gold muff chain. She was
thinking of many things: she was certain in her own mind that the man
now stricken down at Monte Carlo could tell much about his daughter’s
divorce, if he could not, which she thought possible, tell that which
would reunite his daughter and Vanderlin. It would never do to let his
grandnephew, who was simplicity and veracity incarnate, get to the
bedside and hear what might be the deathbed confessions. She wished to
do that herself, for knowledge is always power.
The complete security with which Khris of Karstein had told her that he
would prevent her schemes as to Vanderlin ever bearing fruition, must
certainly point to one thing only, that he had the means to clear the
character of his daughter to her divorced husband.
She hastily reasoned that, however odd it might look to others, she
must see the old man before he died. After all, her visit to him could
be put upon charity; poor Charity has borne many heavier and uglier
burdens than the rosy children with which Correggio loaded her.
She felt moreover that she would like to see him, lying speechless,
paralyzed, impatient; he had been so odiously rude!
Still playing with the long gold chain, she turned her eyes on young
Woffram, dazzling him with their azure light.
“I feel like a brute to do nothing for him,” said the good-natured
young cuirassier. “As to telegraphing to my father it would be a
mere waste of money; he would never bear his uncle Khristof’s name
mentioned.”
“Then I think you would do very foolishly to go near the old man,”
said his friend. “It would embroil you with your people, and go
against you at Berlin. I told you the other day that I am not afraid
of compromising myself by being kind to people who are under a cloud.
I will go and see after Prince Khris if you like; I was going to Monte
Carlo to-morrow--I will go to-day instead. There is a train in an hour.
I will telegraph you word how he is.”
The young man stared at her.
It seemed very angelic, but he was not accustomed to see her in such an
angelic light, though he adored her. Simple and unsuspecting though he
was he could not help seeing that there must be some interest in this
offered charity beyond the benevolence visible on the surface.
“It would be wonderfully good of you,” he said with hesitation. “But
would it not look rather odd?”
“I never care what a thing looks,” she replied with impatience, “and
really, my dear Wuffie, I don’t believe even an international jury of
British and German matrons would put a scandalous interpretation on a
visit to a dying man of seventy-eight years of age!”
“He’s only sixty-eight,” murmured his grandnephew. “But of course, if
you don’t mind, it would be exceedingly kind of you, and--and----”
“Where is Prince Khris living--do you know?”
“No.”
“Oh, I can soon find out when I get there. He won’t be far from the
Casino.”
The young soldier was surprised. He had not thought charity abode
within the white bosom of his enchanting friend. He could not easily
imagine her sitting by a discarded and despised old sinner’s deathbed.
He had seen her in many characters but never in that of the ministering
angel when pain and anguish wring the brow.
“What on earth is she up to?” he thought, and said a little awkwardly:
“He didn’t win much, I think; he’d just got on a run of the rouge when
he dropped----”
“My dear Wuffie, I’m not going to steal his winnings!” said Mouse with
her pretty crystal-clear laugh. “I’ve known him a long time, poor old
man, and it’s only human to go and look after him. People at Monte
Carlo are wild beasts, and they didn’t look off the tables I dare say,
when he fell, and I am sure none of them will go near him. I shall take
the two o’clock train; you can come over on Sunday as we agreed.”
Prince Woffram meekly acquiesced. He felt that there was something
which he did not understand in the air; although not very quick of
perception, and although very much enamored, he vaguely suspected that
his unknown greatuncle must possess letters or papers or knowledge
which might compromise this ministering angel if she did not get to the
bedside before somebody else. He adored her, but he had no illusions
about her, the few he had ever had, like roses rudely shaken, had
fallen before the merciless revelations of his friend Boo.
Boo and her governess accompanied her that day on her mission of mercy.
She knew too well the value as social shield of her little daughter’s
presence. She was genuinely fond of the child; but if she had not been
fond of her, she would nevertheless have appreciated and utilized the
safety which lies in such an accompaniment. As for the governess, she
was discretion itself, saw nothing, heard nothing, that she was not to
see and hear, and was easily purchased for all eternity by a bracelet
at Christmas or a ring at Easter.
As the train ran through the beautiful coast scenery, so familiar
to her that she had ceased even to look at it, she had such a vague
titillation of curiosity and excitement as a young panther may feel
who for the first time smells a human footprint on the grass. She
liked intrigue and comedy for their own sakes; even if they had no
consequences they passed the time amusingly and lent a sense of
ability and power. The combinations of life are like those of whist or
chess--they exercise the intelligence, they flatter the consciousness
of skill.
She was more convinced than ever that Prince Khris had the power to
reunite his daughter and her divorced husband. The idea of a _femme
tarée_ reigning over the beautiful Les Mouettes was odious to her
and ridiculous. She had a most profound contempt for women who were
compromised. She felt for them what the head of the herd is said to
feel for the lamed and stricken deer. She had indeed no patience with
them, for it was they, the silly demonstrative creatures, who set
society’s back up and made things uncomfortable for wiser persons. A
woman like Olga zu Lynar who had married into all this money and had
not known how to keep it seemed to her perfectly idiotic. She felt that
if she herself had acquired all these millions her own conduct would
have been perfectly exemplary; at all events wholly unattackable.
But she desired intensely to know the truth about this unworthy
_divorcée_, since until she did know it she could not make her own
plans with any chance of success. As the train swung on through the
tunnels her pity for herself was extreme; it was cruelly hard that
she should always be driven to do all kinds of unpleasant and dubious
things because other people were so inconsiderate and annoying.
Why could not old Khris have had his fit before coming to interfere
about Vanderlin? She could not really be sure that he had not already
seen Vanderlin; the latter had been impenetrable, and clearly on his
guard that day of the breakfast at Les Mouettes. She felt that she was
playing a dangerous game in the dark--playing lawn-tennis blindfolded.
But it therefore interested her the more.
It was the merest chance that she would gain anything by visiting the
old man; but, on the other hand, she would not lose anything, and she
would look amiable; it seemed to her also clever to have remembered
the few words about him which had been spoken by the Archduke. It is
just such _à propos_ remembrance, such connection of trifles, which
make clever detectives and successful spies. As the train ran on she
apparently listened to the chatter of Boo over a big sack of bonbons
and a big bouquet of lilies of the valley, but in herself she was
thinking that her ingenuity and intelligence had merited a better fate
than that of having to worry about hotel bills and scheme to marry
a banker. She did not like the idea of marrying Vanderlin, she did
not think he would be facile, though he had the reputation of being
generous; she did not think that he would be likely to let her make
ducks and drakes of European finance as it would have diverted her to
do in his place; he looked grave, he was serious and sad, and he bored
her. Besides, she would have preferred to marry no one. But there was
nothing else that she could do, or at least nothing else which promised
so well, which offered so much solidity and comfort for the future.
Therefore she went on through the olive-woods and by the edge of the
blue sea to Monte Carlo.
When Boo and the bouquets and bonbons were left in safety at the Hotel
de Paris, she caused herself to be dressed in the simplest black gown
she possessed, put a grey golfing-cloak over that, and with a felt hat
and a thick veil went out all alone; hoping to pass unperceived in this
place which was filled with hundreds of men and women of her world, and
hundreds also of worlds of which hers knew nothing.
She had learned that Prince Khris was to be found in a house out of
the town, where he had a modest chamber, whither he had been carried
speechless and apparently unconscious on the previous night, when he
had dropped, huddled and bent like a collapsed marionette, amidst a
crowd of gamblers who scarcely turned their heads to see what had
happened.
It was a small poor chamber over a grocer’s shop in the outskirts, in
which there lay dying the man who had seen sentinels present arms when
he had passed as a young child in his donkey chaise, with a lady of his
father’s Court in charge of him, across the Platz of the small ducal
city.
She felt a sense of pain as she ascended the narrow uncarpeted stair in
the close unpleasant atmosphere.
“Has he not even a valet?” she said to the old woman who left the shop
to show her the way upstairs.
“No, madame,” answered the woman. “We look after the poor old gentleman
as well as we can; there is only me and my sister; and one of us must
attend to the business.”
Mouse shivered a little as she heard; it was a realization of indigence
by which she had never been before confronted. Want of money she had
known, and debt and great anxiety; but she had never been without
servants, up a rickety stair, above a smelly little shop. It shocked
her to see a man of this rank, of her own world, thus utterly abandoned
like any beggar who had fallen by the roadside.
The frightful callousness of human nature when it is not softened
by deference to wealth and self-interest struck her with its chill
brutality like a handful of ice flung in her face. She was no kinder
herself; still the realization of the rough and jeering egotism of the
world momentarily hurt her. She thought of Buckingham dying alone
in the garret. There was the solidarity of class between her and the
fallen prince; and there was also the possibility that she herself
might some day, in some far away old age, be no better off than he.
The woman opened a low door as she spoke, and Mouse saw into the
room--a poor place with grey walls, a brick floor, spare furniture, and
a narrow bed, whereon lay what was left of the once courtly and elegant
person of Prince Khristof of Karstein. There was one window through
which the slope of an olive-covered hill was visible.
He was conscious, though motionless and speechless; he opened his eyes
at the unclosing of the door, but he did not recognize his visitor
through her thick veil. His features were twisted and drawn, his hands
lay supinely on the rough woollen coverlet; he looked almost already a
corpse: there was only life in the steel-blue, watching, apprehensive
eyes, into which at her appearance there came a gleam of wonder,
perhaps of hope.
“It is very horrible!” she said, with a thrill of genuine distress.
“Are you a relation, madame?” said the woman of the house.
“Only a friend. Does the doctor come often? What does he say?”
“He comes but little,” replied the woman. “He knows he will never be
paid, and he knows nothing will be of any use.”
“Is it quite hopeless?”
“It is only a question of hours.”
“Why did you not send for a _sœur_?”
“We did, but they are all out. Will you be at the charge of the burial,
madame?”
“Send for another,” said Mouse; “there are scores of them.”
“Will madame guarantee all expenses?” asked the woman.
Mouse hesitated; she did not wish to have her visit there known or her
name given.
“I am sure the family of the prince will repay everything,” she
answered. “They are great people.”
The woman smiled dubiously. “Is he really a prince, madame? They are
all princes here, but they pawn their shirts all the same.”
“He is really a prince--a serene highness; he is allied by blood to one
imperial house and two royal houses.”
The woman looked dubious still; a napoleon would have better eased her
doubts.
“That is nothing, madame,” she said with contempt; “those people pay
less willingly than anybody.”
During this colloquy the eyes of Prince Khris watched intently; his
brain was not clear, and his ears seemed stuffed up and filled with
buzzing noises, but he understood that they were talking of him. She
had put back her veil and he had recognized her. Why was the blonde
devil there? Why was not Olga there instead? He had forgotten time,
he had only a confused notion of things; he had recognized the blonde
devil and he was afraid she should get at his papers, but all the rest
was mist and confusion. His memory of his daughter was of her as a
little child--a little child in a white frock, with a pearl necklace
and great brown eyes and a cloud of dark soft hair. When she had been a
little child he had never done her any harm.
The old dame retired, well pleased to see a lady take her place, and
she, left alone, came up to the bedside forcing herself to conquer
her natural aversion to painful and unlovely scenes: she was vaguely
afraid of that mute, paralyzed figure. She dreaded intensely lest the
doctor should arrive before she should have been able to do what she
desired; but for that reason she deemed it prudent to seem anxious
for his presence. No one bent on a dubious errand would ever endeavor
to hasten a doctor’s arrival. The motionless figure on the bed looked
entirely unlike the man whom she had known as Khris Kar: entirely
unlike except for those steel-blue eyes which were staring at her
without recognition, but with challenge and inquiry, for his brain was
still conscious. That gaze frightened her. After all, what business had
she to be there? She was momentarily unnerved; but she had courage and
audacity, and she controlled her nerves and looked away not to see
those searching eyes in the lean, waxen, distorted face.
She went to the window and closed the wooden blinds, for the setting
sun was strong though winter was scarce past. Then she took off her
hat and veil, and moved about the small chamber putting it in order as
she had seen nurses do in sick-rooms, and filling a glass with fresh
water from a pitcher which stood on the floor. The place was horrible
to her; its air was close, its scent bad, its floor was not clean,
the chairs were rush-bottomed, the table was deal; but there was one
thing which belonged to a different sphere, one thing which attracted
her and seemed to suggest that her errand might not be fruitless--it
was a despatch-box of Russian leather, with initials and the crown
of a serene highness in gold or silver gilt above its lock. If there
were any papers of consequence in the room, that box, much battered
by frequent travel, contained them. Moreover, when she approached and
dusted it, she saw the eyes of the man on the bed dilate with menace.
She left it at once and cut a lemon into the glass of water and went to
the bedside with the drink. The shaded light fell across the bed. She
saw the eyes of the paralytic stare upward at her. Then into them came
a ray of comprehension--a flash of hate.
“It _is_ the blonde devil,” thought the still conscious brain, which
had lost all power to communicate its thoughts to the lips and tongue.
“Dear Prince, do you know me?” said his visitor very softly. “I am so
sorry to find you here, and so ill. I should like to be of some use.”
The kind, soft words found their way to the dulled, imprisoned brain;
she saw that by the expression of the eyes; for the eyes in answer
said to her: “I am half dead--I am almost wholly dead; but I am not so
utterly dead yet that I can be fooled by you. Blonde devil, what is it
that you come here to seek?”
She observed that his eyes, leaving her face, turned anxiously in the
direction where the despatch-box was; she saw also that round his
throat was a steel chain with a small gold key. In that box was there
any message for his daughter, or for Vanderlin, or any proof that he
had brought about their separation? It was evident that he was afraid
the box should be touched. This interested her. She was pleased that
her instinct had led her right. She did not dare to act in any way; he
might not be entirely paralyzed as the people said; he might not be so
absolutely sure to die, or to remain speechless until his death; she
knew nothing about his malady, except that he had dropped down suddenly
when punting at Monte Carlo.
She felt that he suspected her, that he would, if he had use of
his voice, have ordered her out of the room; she read all that
in his regard. Prudence necessitated the continuance of the very
tiresome _rôle_ of ministering angel. She dared do nothing until the
doctor should have confirmed the hopelessness of his state. She was
excruciatingly bored, and somewhat frightened. The horrible spectre on
the bed looked like a ghoul so lean, so colorless, so distorted, so
motionless. She had nothing to do, she felt a palpitating terror lest
he should recover the power of speech; she believed that people struck
down by hemiplegia did so recover it sometimes. She held a spoonful of
lemonade to his shut lips; but he did not open them, he only glared at
her. The spoon was of a common white metal, ugly, yellow, discolored;
she hated to touch it.
At that moment a heavy step was heard on the stair and a broad,
bearded, rough-looking man entered with his hat on his head; it was the
doctor.
“_Sapristi!_” he shouted very angrily; “what do you send for again and
again and again. The man is as good as dead. All the science in the
world could not save him. You waste my time. You----”
Catching sight then of a lady in the room he pulled off his hat and
muttered his excuses: he was very busy, he had many sick people, people
who were curable, the man on the bed could not recover.
“Oh, pray do not say so!” said Mouse with much apparent feeling. “Do
they not recover sometimes? I think I have heard----”
“A man of that age cannot recover,” said the doctor impatiently. “He is
practically dead already. He will not live through the night, if you
can call him still living. You are a relation?”
“No. But I have known him in other years, when he was less--less
fortunate; and I know all his people.”
“The lady says they are royal,” murmured the woman of the house.
“Royal!” echoed the doctor with scorn. “If they were the consul would
be after him like a dog after a bone.”
The consul! Mouse remembered with a shock that such a person might
indeed arrive at any moment. She had not thought of this possibility.
The doctor had gone up to the bed, turned down the bedclothes, placed
his stethoscope over the heart, and listened.
“He will die in three or four hours,” he said, as he turned again from
the bed. “The heart is exhausted; it has lost almost all power of
propulsion. Let me hear when all is over. Madame, your servant.”
He hurried out of the room, clapping his hat on his head and noisily
clattering down the stairs.
“You may go,” said Mouse to the woman of the house. “I will stay a few
hours here. Meantime try and get a _Sœur de Charité_.”
“Who will pay for all this expense, madame?” said the woman. “Who will
pay for the burial and all the rest?”
“You must send to the German consul--he will tell you,” said Mouse. “I
ought to have thought of it before. I cannot stay here much longer, but
I will stay till someone in authority comes. Go; send at once to the
consulate.”
“You talk very glibly of sending here and there and everywhere,” said
the woman rather rudely.
Mouse put ten francs into the woman’s hand, wishing to make a friend
of her. “And send for the consul at once that I may speak to him,” she
added, for she always remembered appearances.
It was growing dark. By her watch it was a quarter to six. All light
had faded off the olive-clad slope in front of the window. She had had
no afternoon tea. She began to want her dinner, and, after all, she
might be boring herself to no purpose, on a mere fool’s errand.
The woman came in with a petroleum lamp smelling atrociously.
“Send for a nun,” said Mouse, who only desired to get rid of her. “Send
for another doctor. The Prince cannot lie like this.”
“Very well, madame,” said the woman. “But errands cost money. People
won’t run messages for nothing.”
Mouse gave her some more silver and bade her find a messenger. She was
anxious to be rid of her, for in her presence it was impossible to open
the box. She was resolved to open it. It was not a pleasant thing to
do, but she had an intuitive sense that it was worth doing.
She was glad that neither the woman nor the doctor had asked her
who she was. She summoned all her fortitude to her assistance and
approached the bed.
She saw that he was, as the doctor said, very nearly lifeless. His
breathing was labored and painful, his heart scarcely beat any longer.
His eyes were closed. They had ceased to stare at her. How could she
sever the little steel chain round his throat? He could not cry out or
raise his hand to oppose her; she leaned over him and took hold of the
key. She shrank in all her nerves from the horror of touching him, but
she put a strong pressure on herself and tried to wrench the key from
the ring on which it hung. He seemed insensible and unaware of what
she was doing. But suddenly, as she succeeded in wrenching open the
ring, breaking her shell-like fingernails in doing so, his eyelids were
lifted and consciousness once more glared at her from his regard. She
felt herself turn white with terror and disgust, but she did not loosen
her hold and she pulled the key off the ring. His eyes cursed her, but
his curse was impotent.
She hurried to the leather box, fitted the key in its lock, and opened
it. She did not even look back at the bed. She was in haste lest the
consul or someone else should come up the stairs. In the box there
was nothing but papers. There were the diplomas of orders; there were
certificates of marriage and birth; there were some old letters; and
there was a large sealed packet addressed to Vanderlin. There was
nothing else. Whatever it might once have held of value had been
removed previously by himself, and the stars of the orders had been
pawned and lost.
She took out the packet addressed to Vanderlin, laid the other
documents in order, locked the box and returned to the bedside to put
back the key on the chain.
Then she saw a change which it was impossible to misread. He was dead.
The cerebral excitement, caused by his recognition of her and of her
endeavor to seize the key, had killed him. He was dead and could never
bear witness against her. She fastened the little key on its ring, drew
the sheet up over his breast, and with a shudder left the bedside.
Then she opened the bodice of her gown and put the packet against her
corset; it was bulky, but when she put on her golfing-cloak it did not
show.
When the German consul mounting the stairs opened the door of the
chamber he saw a lady in black and grey, who kneeled by the side of
the bed, the lamplight illumining the golden coils of her hair. He was
greatly touched and impressed. She rose from her knees and addressed
him with a sweet, sad gravity.
“My poor old friend expired but a moment ago,” she said softly. “I am
so glad I came. He would otherwise have died in solitude. Oh, how harsh
and cruel is the world!”
Then she gave him her name and address, said that she had known the
dead man from her childhood, and had come to nurse him because she had
understood that he was all alone.
The consul, a simple sturdy man of business, was deeply moved. When he
had executed the few formalities necessary, and affixed his seal to the
despatch-box, he begged this charming and compassionate stranger to
allow him the honor of driving her back to her hotel.
“Why was not his daughter with him?” she said to the consul. “Oh, I
know why--they have quarrelled; but it is such a sacred tie! Surely----”
“The Countess Olga has always been most generous to her father,
madame,” replied the gentleman. “But it was of no use. It was pouring
money into sieve. I have telegraphed to her. She will probably come in
person, but she cannot be here before another day at the least.”
“How fortunate I had the start of her!” thought the ministering angel
of this deathbed, as she watched the consul affix his seals to the old
despatch-box, of which the only contents of any value were lying safe
against the satin and lace of her stays. She would have infinitely
preferred slipping away unseen from that sorry house, and finding
her way as she could, on foot or by cab, back to her hotel unseen by
anyone. But her mind quickly grasped all the points of a question,
and she immediately perceived that her visit to be creditable must be
unconcealed, and when the fascinated official offered to drive her
back to her hotel, she accepted the offer, realizing all the solidity,
veracity, and respectability which his countenance of her conferred.
She left the woman of the house in charge of the dead body, and with
an aureole of virtue round her head descended the stair which she had
ascended on so questionable an errand.