THE night of the ball arrived. Olivia and her father, the De Peysters
and Pembroke had all agreed to go in one party. The De Peysters had
been very kind and attentive to Olivia. Her gentle ways had captivated
Mrs. De Peyster, and the fun innate in her had done the same for
Helena. They had asked Olivia to receive with them on their reception
day, and she had made quite a little success on her first appearance
in Washington society. She sat behind a cosy tea table in an alcove,
and poured tea with much grace. She was a good linguist, and put two or
three young diplomatists, struggling with the English tongue, at ease
by talking to them in their own language. She possessed the indefinable
charm of good breeding, never more effective than when contrasted with
the flamboyant, cosmopolitan Washington society. The women soon found
out that the men flocked around her. She had half a dozen invitations
before the day was out. Helena, a soft, blonde, kittenish young thing,
was in raptures over her, admiring her as only a very young girl can
admire and adore one a little older than herself. Pembroke was among
the later callers, and, strange to say, Miles was with him. There were
but few persons there by that time, and these Mrs. De Peyster was
entertaining in the large drawing-room. Helena brought Miles into the
little alcove and plied him with soft speeches, tea and cakes. Pembroke
and Olivia sitting by exchanged smiles at the two enjoying themselves
boy and girl fashion. Helena was but nineteen, and Miles had not yet
passed his twenty-third birthday. The horror of his wound was added to
by the youth of his features.
“Now take this little cake,” said Helena, earnestly. “I made these
myself. Do you know that I can make cakes?”
“What an accomplished girl! I shall be afraid of you. I learned to make
ash cakes during the war,” answered Miles as gravely.
“What is an ash cake, pray?”
“Why, it’s--it’s--corn bread baked in the ashes.”
“Oh, how funny! And how do you get the ashes off?”
“Wash them off.”
In the course of the discussion Miles had quite forgotten a piteous
and ineffective little stratagem of his to turn the uninjured side
of his face toward whom he was addressing. He leaned forward, gazing
into Helena’s pretty but somewhat meaningless face, just as any other
youngster might have done, and Helena, with youthful seriousness, had
plunged into the sentimental discussion wherein the American girl is
prone to fall. Pembroke would have gone after ten minutes, but Miles
was so evidently enjoying himself, that the elder brother stayed
on. It was like the afternoon at Olivia’s house--so home-like and
pleasant--Olivia and himself keeping up a desultory conversation while
they sipped tea and listened half-amused to the two youngsters on the
other side of the round table. Olivia glanced at the clock over the
mantel--it was half-past six.
“I must go,” she said. “I shall just have time for my dinner and for an
hour’s rest before I dress for the ball.”
Mrs. De Peyster and Helena urged her to remain and dine, but Olivia
declined, and the servant announced her carriage. Pembroke put her
white burnous around her in the hall, and handed her to her carriage.
They were all to meet at the Russian Legation at half-past ten.
At that hour the broad street in front of the Legation was packed with
carriages. An awning for the waiting footmen extended on each side of
the broad porte cochére. Half a dozen policemen kept the carriages in
line and the coachmen in order--for this was the great ball of the
season, a royal grand duke was to be present, and the fame of Madame
Volkonsky’s beauty had gone far and wide. The vast house blazed with
lights, and amid the rolling of wheels, and the hubbub of many voices
could be heard the strains of an orchestra floating out.
Almost at the same moment the carriages containing Olivia and her
father, Pembroke and the De Peysters drove up, and the party vanished
upstairs.
“How beautiful you are!” cried Helena delightedly, up in the dressing
room, as Olivia dropped her wraps and appeared in her dainty white
toilette, Olivia blushed with gratified vanity. Her dress was the
perfection of simplicity, soft and diaphanous, and around her milk
white arms and throat were her mother’s pearls.
As the three ladies came out into the brilliant corridor to meet their
escorts, Pembroke received a kind of thrill at Olivia’s beauty--a
beauty which had never struck him very forcibly before. She was
undoubtedly pretty and graceful, and he had often admired her slight
and willowy figure--but she had grown beautiful in her solitary country
life--beautiful with patience, courage and womanliness. The Colonel, in
a superb swallow-tail of the style of ten years past, his coat-tails
lined with white satin, his snowy ruffle falling over the bosom of his
waistcoat, his fine curling white hair combed carefully down upon his
velvet collar in the old fashion, offered his arm like a prince to Mrs.
De Peyster, herself a stately and imposing matron, and proud to be
escorted by such a chevalier. Pembroke walked beside Olivia and Helena
down the broad staircase.
Is there any form of social life more imposing than a really splendid
ball? The tall and nodding ferns and palms, the penetrating odor of
flowers, the clash of music, the brilliant crowd moving to and fro
through the great drawing-rooms and halls, brought a deeper flush to
Olivia’s cheek. She felt like a débutante.
They made their way slowly toward the upper end of the last of a noble
suite of rooms. Pembroke was just saying in low tone to the two girls,
“I have looked out for your interests with the Grand Duke. My friend
Ryleief has promised to present both of you--an honor I waived for
myself, as being quite beneath the Grand Duke’s notice, and--”
“Colonel and Miss Berkeley, Mrs. and Miss de Peyster; Mr. Pembroke--”
was bawled out by Pembroke’s friend, Ryleief who was making the
introductions to the new Minister and his wife--and the party stood
face to face with Ahlberg and Madame Koller.
The rencontre was so staggering and unexpected that Pembroke quite lost
his self-possession. He gazed stupidly at the pair before him--M. and
Madame Volkonsky, who had formed much of his life five years before
as Ahlberg and Elise Koller. He saw Ahlberg’s breast covered with
orders, and he wore an elaborate court suit. Madame Koller, or Madame
Volkonsky, blazed with diamonds. Her hair was as blonde and as abundant
as ever, and far behind her streamed a gorgeous satin train of the same
golden hue as her hair.
Olivia, too, felt that sudden shock at meeting people who rise, as it
were, like the dead from their graves. She felt also that repulsion
that came from a knowledge of both of them. She could only silently bow
as they were presented. But both M. and Madame Volkonsky expressed more
than mere surprise at the meeting. Ahlberg or Volkonsky as he now was,
turned excessively pale. His uncertain glance fell on Pembroke, and
turned again on his wife. As for her, the same pallor showed under the
delicate rouge on her cheek, but women rally more quickly under these
things than men do. Besides, she had contemplated the possibility of
meeting some of these people, and was not altogether unprepared for it.
If, however, the blankness of amazement had seized upon Olivia and
Pembroke, and if the De Peysters were also a little unnerved by the
strangeness of what was occurring before them, Colonel Berkeley was
as cool as a cucumber. He held out his hand warmly. He rolled out his
salutations in a loud, rich voice.
“Why, how do you do Eliza. You’ll excuse an old man, my dear, for
calling you by your first name, won’t you? And my friend Ahlberg that
was. This is delightful,” he added, looking around as if to challenge
the whole party.
In the midst of the strange sensations which agitated him, Pembroke
could scarcely forbear from laughing at the Colonel’s greeting, and the
effect it produced. Madame Volkonsky flushed violently, still under her
rouge, while Volkonsky’s face was a study in its helpless rage. Poor
Ryleief, with a mob of fine people surging up to be introduced, was yet
so consumed with curiosity, that he held them all at bay, and looked
from one to the other.
“Does Madame understand that gentleman?” he asked in French, eagerly--
“Of course she does, my dear fellow,” heartily responded Colonel
Berkeley in English. “She spoke English long before she learned
Rooshan, if she ever learned it. Hay, Eliza?”
The Colonel’s manner was so very dignified, and although jovial, so far
removed from familiarity, that Madame Volkonsky did not know whether
to be pleased by the recognition or annoyed. If, as it was likely, it
should come out that she was an American, here were people of the best
standing who could vouch at least for her origin. She held out her hand
to the Colonel, and said rapidly in French:
“I am very glad to meet you. I cannot say much here, but I hope to see
you presently.” When Pembroke made his bow and passed, Volkonsky called
up all his ineffable assurance and gave him a scowl, which Pembroke
received with a bow and a cool smile that was sarcasm itself. Madame
Volkonsky did not look at him as she bowed, nor did he look at her.
In a moment they were clear of the press. The De Peysters were full of
curiosity.
“Who were they? Who are they?” breathlessly asked Helena.
“My dear young lady,” responded the Colonel, smoothing down his
shirt-frill with his delicate old hand, “Who they were I can very
easily tell you. Who they are, I am blessed if I know.”
While the Colonel was giving a highly picturesque account of Eliza
Peyton through all her transformations until she came to be Elise
Koller, since when Colonel Berkeley had no knowledge of her whatever,
Pembroke had given his arm to Olivia, and they moved off into a quiet
corner, where the spreading leaves of a great palm made a little
solitude in the midst of the crowd, and the lights and the crash of
music and the beating of the dancers’ feet in the distance. Pembroke
was alternately pale and red. Madame Volkonsky was nothing to him
now, but he hated Volkonsky with the reprehensible but eminently
human hatred that one man sometimes feels for another. Volkonsky was
a scoundrel and an imposter. It made him furious to think that he
should have dared to return to America, albeit he should come as the
accredited Minister of a great power. It showed a defiance of what
he, Pembroke, knew and could relate of him, that was infuriating
to his self-love. For Elise, he did not know exactly what he most
felt--whether pity or contempt. And the very last time that he and
Olivia Berkeley had discussed Madame Koller was on that April night in
the old garden at Isleham--a recollection far from pleasant.
“Papa’s remark that this meeting was delightful, struck me as rather
ingeniously inappropriate,” said Olivia, seeking the friendly cover of
a joke. “It is frightfully embarrassing to meet people this way.”
“Very,” sententiously answered Pembroke. He was still in a whirl.
Then there was a pause. Suddenly Pembroke bent over toward her and said
distinctly:
“Olivia, did you ever doubt what I told you that night in the garden
about Madame Koller? that she was then, and had been for a long time,
nothing to me? Did you ever have a renewal of your unjust suspicions?”
“No,” answered Olivia, as clearly, after a short silence.
In another instant they were among the crowd of dancers in the ball
room. Neither knew exactly how they happened to get there. Pembroke
did not often dance, and was rather surprised when he found himself
whirling around the ball room with Olivia, to the rhythm of a dreamy
waltz. It was soon over. It came back to Olivia that she ought not so
soon to part company with the De Peysters, and she stopped at once,
thereby cutting short her own rapture as well as Pembroke’s. Without a
word, Pembroke led her back to where the Colonel and Mrs. De Peyster
and Helena were. Helena’s pretty face wore a cloud. She had not yet
been asked to dance, and was more puzzled than pleased at the meeting
which she had witnessed in all its strangeness. Pembroke good naturedly
took her for a turn and brought her back with her card half filled and
the smiles dimpling all over her face.
Meanwhile, the ball went on merrily. Ryleief escaped from his post as
soon as possible and sought Pembroke.
“So you knew M. Volkonsky?” he said eagerly, in a whisper.
“Yes,” said Pembroke--and his look and tone expressed volumes.
Ryleief held him by the arm, and whispered:
“This is confidential. I suspected from the first that our new chief
was--eh--you know--not exactly--”
“Yes,” answered Pembroke, “not exactly a gentleman. An arrant knave and
coward, in short.”
Ryleief, a mature diplomatic sprig, looked fixedly at Pembroke, his
hard Muscovite face growing expressive.
“Speaking as friends, my dear Pembroke--and, you understand in my
position the necessity of prudence--M. Volkonsky is not unknown among
the Russian diplomats. He has been recalled once--warned repeatedly.
Once, some years ago, it was supposed he had been dismissed from
the diplomatic corps. But he reappeared about five years ago under
another name--he was originally an Ahlberg. He certainly inherited
some money, married some more, and took the name of Volkonsky--said
it was a condition of his fortune. He has been _chargé d’affaires_ at
Munich--later at Lisbon--both promotions for him. What his power is at
the Foreign Office I know not--certainly not his family, because he has
none. It is said he is a Swiss.”
“He will not be long here,” remarked Pembroke. Then Pembroke went away
and wandered about, feeling uncomfortable, as every man does, under the
same roof as his enemy. He felt no compunction as to being the guest of
Volkonsky. The legation was Russian property--the ball itself was not
paid for out of Volkonsky’s own pocket, but by his government. Pembroke
felt, though, that when it came out, as it must, the part that he would
take in exposing the Russian Minister, his presence at the ball might
not be understood, and he would gladly have left the instant he found
out who Volkonsky really was but for the Berkeleys and the De Peysters.
He stood off and watched the two girls as they danced--both with
extreme grace. There was no lack of partners for them. Mrs. De Peyster,
with the Colonel hovering near her, did not have her charges on her
hands for much of the time. The truth is, Olivia, although the shock
and surprise of meeting two people who were connected with a painful
part of her life was unpleasant, yet was she still young and fresh
enough to feel the intoxication of a ball. The music got into her feet,
the lights and flowers dazzled her eyes. She was old enough to seize
the present moment of enjoyment, and to postpone unpleasant things to
the morrow, and young enough to feel a keen enjoyment in the present.
She would never come to another ball at the Russian Legation, so there
was that much more reason she should enjoy this one.
As Pembroke passed near her once she made a little mocking mouth at him.
“Your friend, Ryleief, promised that I should be introduced to the
Grand Duke--and--”
“Look out,” answered Pembroke, laughing, “he is coming this way. Now
look your best.”
At that very instant Ryleief was making his way toward them with the
Grand Duke, a tall, military looking fellow, who surveyed the crowd
with very unpretending good humor. Pembroke saw the presentation
made, and Olivia drop a courtesy, which Helena De Peyster, at her
elbow, imitated as the scion of royalty bowed to her. The Grand Duke
squared off and began a conversation with Olivia. She had the sort
of training to pay him the delicate flattery which princes love, but
she had the American sense of humor which the continental foreigners
find so captivating. Pembroke, still smiling to himself, imagined the
platitudes his royal highness was bestowing upon the young American
girl, when suddenly the Grand Duke’s mouth opened wide, and he laughed
outright at something Olivia had said. Thenceforth her fortune was made
with the Grand Duke.
The next thing Pembroke saw was Olivia placing her hand in the Grand
Duke’s, and the pair went sailing around the room in the peculiar slow
and ungraceful waltz danced by foreigners. Olivia had no difficulty
in keeping step with her six-foot Grand Duke, and really danced the
awkward dance as gracefully as it could be done. Mrs. De Peyster’s face
glowed as they passed. Olivia was chaperoned by her, and as such she
enjoyed a reflected glory. The great maternal instinct welled up in
her--she glanced at Helena--but Helena was so young--a mere chit--and
Mrs. De Peyster was not of an envious nature. Colonel Berkeley felt
a kind of pride at the success Olivia was making, but when a superb
dowager sitting next Mrs. De Peyster asked, in a loud whisper, if he
was “the father of Miss Berkeley,” the Colonel’s wrath rose. He made
a courtly bow, and explained that Miss Berkeley was the daughter of
Colonel Berkeley, of Virginia.
Not only once did the Grand Duke dance with Olivia, but twice--and he
asked permission to call on her the next afternoon.
“With the greatest pleasure,” answered Olivia gayly--“and--pray don’t
forget to come.”
At which the Grand Duke grinned like any other man at a merry challenge
from a girl.
At last the ball was over. Toward two o’clock Pembroke put the ladies
of his party in their carriages and started to walk home. Madame
Volkonsky had not been able to spoil the ball for Olivia.
“Good-bye,” she cried to Pembroke, waving her hand. “To-morrow at four
o’clock he comes--I shall begin making my toilette at twelve.”
“Very pretty ball of Eliza Peyton’s,” said the Colonel, settling
himself back in the carriage and buttoning up his great-coat.
“Volkonsky--ha! ha! And that fellow, Ahlberg--by Gad! an infernal
sneaking cur--I beg your pardon, my dear, for swearing, but of all the
damned impostors I ever saw M. Volkonsky is the greatest, excepting
always Eliza Peyton.”