WOLF!
The Countess Lanovitch never quitted her own apartments before mid-day.
She had acquired a Parisian habit of being invisible until
luncheon-time. The two girls left the castle of Thors in a sleigh with
one attendant at ten o'clock in order to reach the hut selected for
luncheon by mid-day. Etta did not accompany them. She had a slight
headache.
At eleven o'clock Claude de Chauxville returned alone, on horseback.
After the sportsmen had separated, each to gain his prearranged position
in the forest, he had tripped over his rifle, seriously injuring the
delicate sighting mechanism. He found (he told the servant who opened
the door for him) that he had just time to return for another rifle
before the operation of closing in on the bears was to begin.
"If Madame the Princess," was visible, he went on, would the servant
tell her that M. de Chauxville was waiting in the library to assure her
that there was absolutely no danger to be anticipated in the day's
sport. The princess, it would appear, was absurdly anxious about the
welfare of her husband--an experienced hunter and a dead shot.
Claude de Chauxville then went to the library, where he waited, booted,
spurred, rifle in hand, for Etta.
After a lapse of five minutes or more, the door was opened, and Etta
came leisurely into the room.
"Well?" she enquired indifferently.
De Chauxville bowed. He walked past her and closed the door, which she
happened to have left open.
Then he returned and stood by the window, leaning gracefully on his
rifle. His attitude, his hunting-suit, his great top-boots, made rather
a picturesque object of him.
"Well?" repeated Etta, almost insolently.
"It would have been wiser to have married me," said De Chauxville
darkly.
Etta shrugged her shoulders.
"Because I understand you better; I _know_ you better than your
husband."
Etta turned and glanced at the clock.
"Have you come back from the bear-hunt to tell me this, or to avoid the
bears?" she asked.
De Chauxville frowned. A man who has tasted fear does not like a
question of his courage.
"I have come to tell you that and other things," he answered.
He looked at her with his sinister smile and a little upward jerk of the
head. He extended his open hand, palm upward, with the fingers slightly
crooked.
"I hold you, madame," he said--"I hold you in my hand. You are my slave,
despite your brave title; my thing, my plaything, despite your servants,
and your great houses, and your husband! When I have finished telling
you all that I have to tell, you will understand. You will perhaps thank
me for being merciful."
Etta laughed defiantly.
"You are afraid of Paul," she cried. "You are afraid of Karl Steinmetz;
you will presently be afraid of me."
"I think not," said De Chauxville coolly. The two names just mentioned
were certainly not of pleasant import in his ears, but he was not going
to let a woman know that. This man had played dangerous cards before
now. He was not at all sure of his ground. He did not know what Etta's
position was in regard to Steinmetz. Behind the defiant woman there
lurked the broad shadow of the man who never defied; who knew many
things, but was ignorant of fear.
Unlike Karl Steinmetz, De Chauxville was not a bold player. He liked to
be sure of his trick before he threw down his trump card. His method was
not above suspicion: he liked to know what cards his adversary held, and
one may be sure that he was not above peeping.
"Karl Steinmetz is no friend of yours," he said.
Etta did not answer. She was thinking of the conversation she had had
with Steinmetz in Petersburg. She was wondering whether the friendship
he had offered--the solid thing as he called it--was not better than the
love of this man.
"I have information now," went on De Chauxville, "which would have made
you my wife, had I had it sooner."
"I think not," said the lady insolently. She had dealt with such men
before. Hers was the beauty that appealed to De Chauxville and such as
he. It is not the beautiful women who see the best side of human nature.
"Even now," went on the Frenchman, "now that I know you--I still love
you. You are the only woman I shall ever love."
"Indeed!" murmured the lady, quite unmoved.
"Yes; although in a way I despise you--now that I know you."
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Etta. "If you have any thing to say, please say
it. I have no time to probe your mysteries--to discover your parables.
You know me well enough, perhaps, to be aware that I am not to be
frightened by your cheap charlatanism."
"I know you well enough," retorted De Chauxville hoarsely, "to be aware
that it was you who sold the Charity League papers to Vassili in Paris.
I know you well enough, madame, to be aware of your present position in
regard to your husband. If I say a word in the right quarter you would
never leave Russia alive. I have merely to say to Catrina Lanovitch that
it was you who banished her father for your own gain. I have merely to
hand your name in to certain of the Charity League party, and even your
husband could not save you."
He had gradually approached her, and uttered the last words face to
face, his eyes close to hers. She held her head up--erect, defiant
still.
"So you see, madame," he said, "you belong to me."
She smiled.
"Hand and foot," he added. "But I am soft-hearted."
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
"What will you?" he said, looking out of the window. "I love you."
"Nonsense!"
He turned slowly round.
"What?"
"Nonsense!" repeated Etta. "You love power; you are a bully. You love to
please your own vanity by thinking that you have me in your power. I am
not afraid of you."
De Chauxville leaned gracefully against the window. He still held his
rifle.
"Reflect a little," he said, with his cold smile. "It would appear that
you do not quite realize the situation. Women rarely realize situations
in time. Our friend--your husband--has many of the English
idiosyncrasies. He has all the narrow-minded notions of honor which
obtain in that country. Added to this, I suspect him of possessing a
truly Slavonic fire which he keeps under. 'A smouldering fire--' You
know, madame, our French proverb. He is not the man to take a rational
and broad-minded view of your little transaction with M. Vassili; more
especially, perhaps, as it banished his friend Stépan Lanovitch--the
owner of this house, by the way. His reception of the news I have to
tell him would be unpleasant--for you."
"What do you want?" interrupted Etta. "Money?"
"I am not a needy adventurer."
"And I am not such a fool, M. de Chauxville, as to allow myself to be
dragged into a vulgar intrigue, borrowed from a French novel, to satisfy
your vanity."
De Chauxville's dull eyes suddenly flashed.
"I will trouble you to believe, madame," he said, in a low, concentrated
voice, "that such a thought never entered my head. A De Chauxville is
not a commercial traveller, if you please. No; it may surprise you, but
my feeling for you has more good in it than you would seem capable of
inspiring. God only knows how it is that a bad woman can inspire a good
love."
Etta looked at him in amazement. She did not always understand De
Chauxville. No matter for surprise, perhaps; for he did not always
understand himself.
"Then what do you want?" she asked.
"In the meantime, implicit obedience."
"What are you going to use me for?"
"I have ends," replied Claude de Chauxville, who had regained his usual
half-mocking composure, "that you will serve. But they will be your ends
as well as mine. You will profit by them. I will take very good care
that you come to no harm, for you are the ultimate object of all this.
At the end of it all I see only--you."
Etta shrugged her shoulders. It is to be presumed that she was
absolutely heartless. Many women are. It is when a heartless woman has
brains that one hears of her.
"What if I refuse?" asked Etta, keenly aware of the fact that this man
was handicapped by his love for her.
"Then I will force you to obedience."
Etta raised her delicate eyebrows insolently.
"Ah!"
"Yes," said De Chauxville, with suppressed anger; "I will force you to
obey me."
The princess looked at him with her little mocking smile. She raised one
hand to her head with a reflective air, as if a hair-pin were of greater
importance than his words. She had dressed herself rather carefully for
this interview. She never for a moment overlooked the fact that she was
a woman, and beautiful. She did not allow him to forget it either.
Her mood of outraged virtue was now suddenly thrown into the background
by a phase of open coquetry. Beneath her eyelids she watched for the
effect of her pretty, provoking attitude on the man who loved her. She
was on her own territory at this work, playing her own game; and she was
more alarmed by De Chauxville's imperturbability than by any thing he
had said.
"You have a strange way of proving the truth of your own statements."
"What statements?"
She gave a little laugh. Her attitude, her glance, the cunning display
of a perfect figure, the laugh, the whole woman, was the incarnation of
practised coquetry. She did not admit, even to herself, that she was
afraid of De Chauxville. But she was playing her best cards, in her best
manner. She had never known them fail.
Claude de Chauxville was a little white about the lips. His eyelids
flickered, but by an effort he controlled himself, and she did not see
the light in his eyes for which she looked.
"If you mean," he said coldly, "the statement that I made to you before
you were married--namely, that I love you--I am quite content to leave
the proof till the future. I know what I am about, madame."
He took his watch from his pocket and consulted it.
"I must go in five minutes," he said. "I have a few instructions to give
you, to which I must beg your careful attention."
He looked up, meeting Etta's somewhat sullen gaze with a smile of
triumph.
"It is essential," he went on, "that I be invited to Osterno. I do not
want to stay there long; indeed, I do not care to. But I must see the
place. I dare say you can compass the invitation, madame?"
"It will be difficult."
"And therefore worthy of your endeavor. I have the greatest regard for
your diplomatic skill. I leave the matter in your hands, princess."
Etta shrugged her shoulders and looked past him out of the window. De
Chauxville was considering her face carefully.
"Another point to be remembered," he went on, "is your husband's daily
life at Osterno. The prince is not above suspicion; the authorities are
watching him. He is suspected of propagating revolutionary ideas among
the peasantry. I should like you to find out as much as you can. Perhaps
you know already. Perhaps he has told you, princess. I know that
beautiful face! He has told you! Good! Does he take an interest in the
peasants?"
Etta did not answer.
"Kindly give me your attention, madame. Does the prince take an interest
in the peasants?"
"Yes."
"An active interest?"
"Yes."
"Have you any details?"
"No," answered Etta.
"Then you will watch him, and procure those details."
Etta's face was defiant and pale. De Chauxville never took his eyes from
it.
"I have undertaken a few small commissions for an old friend of yours,
M. Vassili, whom you obliged once before!" he said; and the defiance
faded from her eyes.
"The authorities cannot, in these disturbed times, afford to tolerate
princes of an independent turn of mind. Such men are apt to make the
peasant think himself more important than he is. I dare say, madame,
that you are already tired of Russia. It might perhaps serve your ends
if this country was made a little too hot for your husband, eh? I see
your proud lips quivering, princess! It is well to keep the lips under
control. We, who deal in diplomacy, know where to look for such signs.
Yes; I dare say I can get you out of Russia--for ever. But you must be
obedient. You must reconcile yourself to the knowledge that you have
met--your master."
He bowed in his graceful way, spreading out his hands in mock humility.
Etta did not answer him. For the moment she could see no outlet to this
maze of trouble, and yet she was conscious of not fearing De Chauxville
so much as she feared Karl Steinmetz.
"A lenient master," pursued the Frenchman, whose vanity was tickled by
the word. "I do not ask much. One thing is to be invited to Osterno,
that I may be near you. The other is a humble request for details of
your daily life, that I may think of you when absent."
Etta drew in her lips, moistening them as if they had suddenly become
parched.
De Chauxville glanced at her and moved toward the door. He paused with
his fingers on the handle, and looking back over his shoulder he said:
"Have I made myself quite clear?"
Etta was still looking out of the window with hard, angry eyes. She took
no notice of the question.
De Chauxville turned the handle.
"Again let me impress upon you the advisability of implicit obedience,"
he said, with delicate insolence. "I mentioned the Charity League; but
that is not my strongest claim upon your attention. I have another
interesting little detail of your life, which I will reserve until
another time."
He closed the door behind him, leaving Etta white-lipped.