a mistake."
"Then you consider in the present instance that you have not made a
mistake? You are frank."
"At least I have not made a mistake which I can not rectify. Madam, let
us not be enemies. As you say, I owe you too much. What is it you
desire?"--with forced amiability.
"Deprive Colonel Annesley of his honor, that, as you say, is
inevitable; but I love that girl as I would a child of my own, and I
will not see her caught in a net of this sort, or wedded to a man whose
government robs him of his manhood and individuality."
"Do not forget that I hold my country first and foremost,"--proudly.
"Love has no country, nor laws, nor galling chains of incertitude. Love
is magnificent only in that it gives all without question. You love
this girl with reservations. You shall not have her. You shall not have
even me, who love you after a fashion, for I could never look upon you
as a husband; in my eyes you would always be an accomplice."
"It is war, then?"--curtly.
"War? Oh, no; we merely sever our diplomatic relations," she purred.
"Madam, listen to me. I shall make one more attempt to win this girl
honorably. For you are right: love to be love must be magnificent. If
she accepts me, for her sake I will become an outcast, a man without a
country. If she refuses me, I shall go on to the end. Speak to the
colonel, Madam; it is too late. Like myself, he has gone too far. Why
did you open the way for me as you did? I should have been satisfied
with a discontented clerk. You threw this girl across my path,
indirectly, it is true; but nevertheless the fault is yours."
"I recognize it. At that time I did not realize how much you were to
me."
"You are a strange woman. I do not understand you."
"Incompatibility. Come, the carriage is waiting. Let us be gone."
"You have spoilt the evening for me," said the count, as he threw her
cloak across her shoulders.
"On the contrary, I have added a peculiar zest. Now, let us go and
appear before the world, and smile, and laugh, and eat, and gossip. Let
the heart throb with a dull pain, if it will; the mask is ours to do
with as we may."
They were, in my opinion, two very unusual persons.
[Illustration: "Lay the rose on the table"--Act II.]
XVII
DINNER IS SERVED
"Ha!"
Monsieur Pierre, having uttered this ejaculation, stepped back and
rested his fat hands on his fat hips. As he surveyed the impromptu
butler, a shade of perplexity spread over his oily face. He smoothed
his imperial and frowned. This groom certainly _looked_ right, but
there was something lacking in his make-up, that indefinable something
which is always found in the true servant--servility. There was no
humility here, no hypocritical meekness, no suavity; there was nothing
smug or self-satisfied. In truth, there was something grimly earnest,
which was not to be understood readily. Monsieur Pierre, having always
busied himself with soups and curries and roasts and sauces, was not a
profound analyst; yet his instinctive shrewdness at once told him that
this fellow was no servant, nor could he ever be made into one. Though
voluble enough in his kitchen, Monsieur Pierre lacked expression when
confronted by any problem outside of it. Here was the regulation
swallow-tail coat and trousers of green, the striped red vest, and the
polished brass buttons; but the man inside was too much for him.
"_Diable_! you _luke_ right. But, no, I can not explain. Eet ees on zee
tongue, but eet rayfuse. Ha! I haf eet! You lack vot zay call zee real.
You make me t'ink uf zee sairvant on zee stage, somet'ing bettair off;
eh?" This was as near as monsieur ever got to the truth of things.
During this speculative inventory, Warburton's face was gravely set;
indeed, it pictured his exact feelings. He _was_ grave. He even wanted
Pierre's approval. He was about to pass through a very trying ordeal;
he might not even pass through it. There was no deceiving his colonel's
eyes, hang him! Whatever had induced fate to force this old Argus-eyed
soldier upon the scene? He glanced into the kitchen mirror. He
instantly saw the salient flaw in his dress. It was the cravat. Tie it
as he would, it never approached the likeness of the conventional
cravat of the waiter. It still remained a polished cravat, a worldly
cravat, the cravat seen in ball-rooms, drawing-rooms, in the theater
stalls and boxes, anywhere but in the servants' hall. Oh, for the
ready-made cravat that hitched to the collar-button! And then there was
that servant's low turned-down collar, glossy as celluloid. He felt as
diffident in his bare throat as a debutante feels in her first
decollete ball-gown, not very well covered up, as it were. And, heaven
and earth, how appallingly large his hands had grown, how clumsy his
feet! Would the colonel expose him? Would he keep silent? This remained
to be found out: wherein lay the terror of suspense.
"Remem_bair_," went on Monsieur Pierre, after a pause, feeling that he
had a duty to fulfil and a responsibility to shift to other shoulders
than his own, "remem_bair_, eef you spill zee soup, I keel you. You
carry zee tureen in, zen you deesh out zee soup, and sairve. Zee
oystaires should be on zee table t'ree minutes before zee guests haf
arrive'. Now, can you make zee American cocktail?"
"I can,"--with a ghost of a smile.
"Make heem,"--with a pompous wave of the hand toward the favorite
ingredients.
"What kind?"
"Vot kind! Eez zare more cocktails, zen?"
"Only two that are proper, the manhattan and the martini."
"Make zee martini; I know heem."
"But cocktails ought not be mixed before serving."
"I say, make zee one cocktail,"--coldly and skeptically. "I test heem."
Warburton made one. Monsieur sipped it slowly, making a wry face, for,
true Gaul that he was, only two kinds of stimulants appealed to his
palate, liqueurs and wines. He found it as good as any he had ever
tasted.
"Ver' good,"--softening. "Zare ees, zen, one t'ing zat all zee
Americans can make, zee cocktail? I am educate'; I learn. Now leaf me
till eight. Keep zee collect head;"--and Monsieur Pierre turned his
attention to his partridges.
James went out of doors to get a breath of fresh air and to collect his
thoughts, which were wool-gathering, whatever that may mean. They
needed collecting, these thoughts of his, and labeling, for they were
at all points of the compass, and he was at a loss upon which to draw
for support. Here he was, in a devil of a fix, and no possible way of
escaping except by absolutely bolting; and he vowed that he wouldn't
bolt, not if he stood the chance of being exposed fifty times over. He
had danced; he was going to pay the fiddler like a man. He had never
run away from anything, and he wasn't going to begin now.
At the worst, they could only laugh at him; but his secret would be his
no longer. Ass that he had been! How to tell this girl that he loved
her? How to appear to her as his natural self? What a chance he had
wilfully thrown away! He might have been a guest to-night; he might
have sat next to her, turned the pages of her music, and perhaps sighed
love in her ear, all of which would have been very proper and
conventional. Ah, if he only knew what was going on behind those
Mediterranean eyes of hers, those heavenly sapphires. Had she any
suspicion? No, it could not be possible; she had humiliated him too
often, to suspect the imposture. Alackaday!
Had any one else applied the disreputable terms he applied to himself
there would have been a battle royal. When he became out of breath, he
reentered the house to have a final look at the table before the ordeal
began.
Covers had been laid for twelve; immaculate linen, beautiful silver,
and sparkling cut-glass. He wondered how much the girl was worth, and
thought of his own miserable forty-five hundred the year. True, his
capital could at any time be converted into cash, some seventy-five
thousand, but it would be no longer the goose with the golden egg. A
great bowl of roses stood on a glass center-piece. As he leaned toward
them to inhale their perfume he heard a sound. He turned.
She stood framed in a doorway, a picture such as artists conjure up to
fit in sunlit corners of gloomy studios: beauty, youth, radiance,
luster, happiness. To his ardent eyes she was supremely beautiful. How
wildly his heart beat! This was the first time he had seen her in all
her glory. His emotion was so strong that he did not observe that she
was biting her nether lip.
"Is everything well, James?" she asked, meaning the possibilities of
service and not the cardiac intranquillity of the servant.
"Very well, Miss Annesley,"--with a sudden bold scrutiny.
Whatever it was she saw in his eyes it had the effect of making hers
turn aside. To bridge the awkwardness of the moment, he rearranged a
napkin; and she remarked his hands. They were tanned, but they were
elegantly shaped and scrupulously well taken care of--the hands of a
gentleman born, of an aristocrat. He could feel her gaze penetrate like
acid. He grew visibly nervous.
"You haven't the hand of a servant, James,"--quietly.
He started, and knocked a fork to the floor.
"They are too clumsy," she went on maliciously.
"I am not a butler, Miss; I am a groom. I promise to do the very best I
can." Wrath mingled with the shame on his face.
"A man who can do what you did this morning ought not to be afraid of a
dinner-table."
"There is some difference between a dinner-table and a horse, Miss." He
stooped to recover the fork while she touched her lips with her
handkerchief. The situation was becoming unendurable. He knew that, for
some reason, she was quietly laughing at him.
"Never put back on the table a fork or piece of silver that has fallen
to the floor," she advised. "Procure a clean one."
"Yes, Miss." Why, in heaven's name, didn't she go and leave him in
peace?
"And be very careful not to spill a drop of the burgundy. It is
seventy-eight, and a particular favorite of my father's."
Seventy-eight! As if he hadn't had many a bottle of that superb vintage
during the past ten months! The glands in his teeth opened at the
memory of that taste.
"James, we have been in the habit of paying off the servants on this
day of the month. Payday comes especially happy this time. It will put
good feeling into all, and make the service vastly more expeditious."
She counted out four ten-dollar notes from a roll in her hand and
signified him to approach. He took the money, coolly counted it, and
put it in his vest-pocket.
"Thank you, Miss."
I do not say that she looked disappointed, but I assert that she was
slightly disconcerted. She never knew the effort he had put forth to
subdue the desire to tear the money into shreds, throw it at her feet
and leave the house.
"When the gentlemen wish for cigars or cigarettes, you will find them
in the usual place, the tower drawer in the sideboard." With a swish
she was gone.
He took the money out and studied it. No, he wouldn't tear it up;
rather he would put it among his keepsakes.
I shall leave Mr. Robert, or M'sieu Zhames, to recover his
tranquillity, and describe to you the character and quality of the
guests. There was the affable military attache of the British embassy,
there was a celebrated American countess, a famous dramatist and his
musical wife, Warburton's late commanding colonel, Mrs. Chadwick, Count
Karloff, one of the notable grand opera prima-donnas, who would not
sing in opera till February, a cabinet officer and his wife, Colonel
Annesley and his daughter. You will note the cosmopolitan character of
these distinguished persons. Perhaps in no other city in America could
they be brought together at an informal dinner such as this one was.
There was no question of precedence or any such nonsense. Everybody
knew everybody else, with one exception. Colonel Raleigh was a
comparative stranger. But he was a likable old fellow, full of stories
of the wild, free West, an excellent listener besides, who always
stopped a goodly distance on the right side of what is known in polite
circles as the bore's dead-line. Warburton held for him a deep
affection, martinet though he was, for he was singularly just and
merciful.
They had either drunk the cocktail or had set it aside untouched, and
had emptied the oyster shells, when the ordeal of the soup began. Very
few of those seated gave any attention to my butler. The first thing he
did was to drop the silver ladle. Only the girl saw this mishap. She
laughed; and Raleigh believed that he had told his story in an
exceptionally taking manner. My butler quietly procured another ladle,
and proceeded coolly enough. I must confess, however, that his coolness
was the result of a physical effort. The soup quivered and trembled
outrageously, and more than once he felt the heat of the liquid on his
thumb. This moment his face was pale, that moment it was red. But, as I
remarked, few observed him. Why should they? Everybody had something to
say to everybody else; and a butler was only a machine anyway. Yet,
three persons occasionally looked in his direction: his late colonel,
Mrs. Chadwick, and the girl; each from a different angle of vision.
There was a scowl on the colonel's face, puzzlement on Mrs. Chadwick's,
and I don't know what the girl's represented, not having been there
with my discerning eyes.
Once the American countess raised her lorgnette and murmured: "What a
handsome butler!"
Karloff, who sat next to her, twisted his mustache and shrugged. He had
seen handsome peasants before. They did not interest him. He glanced
across the table at the girl, and was much annoyed that she, too, was
gazing at the butler, who had successfully completed the distribution
of the soup and who now stood with folded arms by the sideboard. (How I
should have liked to see him!)
When the butler took away the soup-plates, Colonel Raleigh turned to
his host.
"George, where the deuce did you pick up that butler?"
Annesley looked vaguely across the table at his old comrade. He had
been far away in thought. He had eaten nothing.
"What?" he asked.
"I asked you where the deuce you got that butler of yours."
"Oh, Betty found him somewhere. Our own butler is away on a vacation. I
had not noticed him. Why?"
"Well, if he doesn't look like a cub lieutenant of mine, I was born
without recollection of faces."
"An orderly of yours, a lieutenant, did you say?" asked Betty, with
smoldering fires in her eyes.
"Yes."
"That is strange," she mused.
"Yes; very strange. He was a daredevil, if there ever was one."
"Ah!"
"Yes; best bump of location in the regiment, and the steadiest
nerve,"--dropping his voice.
The girl leaned on her lovely arms and observed him interestedly.
"A whole company got lost in a snowstorm one winter. You know that on
the prairie a snowstorm means that only a compass can tell you where
you are; and there wasn't one in the troop,--a bad piece of
carelessness on the captain's part. Well, this cub said _he'd_ find the
way back, and the captain wisely let him take the boys in hand."
"Go on," said the girl.
"Interested, eh?"
"I am a soldier's daughter, and I love the recital of brave deeds."
"Well, he did it. Four hours later they were being thawed out in the
barracks kitchens. Another hour and not one of them would have lived to
tell the tale. The whisky they poured into my cub--"
"Did he drink?" she interrupted.
"Drink? Why, the next day he was going to lick the men who had poured
the stuff down his throat. A toddy once in a while; that was all he
ever took. And how he loved a fight! He had the tenacity of a bulldog;
once he set his mind on getting something, he never let up till he got
it."
The girl trifled thoughtfully with a rose.
"Was he ever in any Indian fights?" she asked, casually.
"Only scraps and the like. He went into the reservation alone one day
and arrested a chief who had murdered a sheep-herder. It was a
volunteer job, and nine men out of ten would never have left the
reservation alive. He was certainly a cool hand."
"I dare say,"--smiling. She wanted to ask him if he had ever been hurt,
this daredevil of a lieutenant, but she could not bring the question to
her lips. "What did you say his name was?"--innocently.
"Warburton, Robert Warburton."
Here the butler came in with the birds. The girl's eyes followed him,
hither and thither, her lips hidden behind the rose.
XVIII
CAUGHT!
Karloff came around to music. The dramatist's wife should play Tosti's
_Ave Maria_, Miss Annesley should play the obligato on the violin and
the prima-donna should sing; but just at present the dramatist should
tell them all about his new military play which was to be produced in
December.
"Count, I beg to decline," laughed the dramatist. "I should hardly dare
to tell my plot before two such military experts as we have here. I
should be told to write the play all over again, and now it is too
late."
Whenever Betty's glance fell on her father's face, the gladness in her
own was somewhat dimmed. What was making that loved face so care-worn,
the mind so listless, the attitude so weary? But she was young; the
spirits of youth never flow long in one direction. The repartee,
brilliant and at the same time with every sting withdrawn, flashed up
and down the table like so many fireflies on a wet lawn in July, and
drew her irresistibly.
As the courses came and passed, so the conversation became less and
less general; and by the time the ices were served the colonel had
engaged his host, and the others divided into twos. Then coffee,
liqueurs and cigars, when the ladies rose and trailed into the little
Turkish room, where the "distinguished-looking butler" supplied them
with the amber juice.
A dinner is a function where everybody talks and nobody eats. Some have
eaten before they come, some wish they had, and others dare not eat for
fear of losing some of the gossip. I may be wrong, but I believe that
half of these listless appetites are due to the natural confusion of
forks.
After the liqueurs my butler concluded that his labor was done, and he
offered up a short prayer of thankfulness and relief. Heavens, what
mad, fantastic impulses had seized him while he was passing the soup!
Supposing he _had_ spilled the hot liquid down Karloff's back, or
poured out a glass of burgundy for himself and drained it before them
all, or slapped his late colonel on the back and asked him the state of
his liver? It was maddening, and he marveled at his escape. There
hadn't been a real mishap. The colonel had only scowled at him; he was
safe. He passed secretly from the house and hung around the bow-window
which let out on the low balcony. The window was open, and occasionally
he could hear a voice from beyond the room, which was dark.
It was one of those nights, those mild November nights, to which the
novelists of the old regime used to devote a whole page; the silvery
pallor on the landscape, the moon-mists, the round, white, inevitable
moon, the stirring breezes, the murmur of the few remaining leaves, and
all that. But these busy days we have not the time to read nor the
inclination to describe.
Suddenly upon the stillness of the night the splendor of a human voice
broke forth; the prima-donna was trying her voice. A violin wailed a
note. A hand ran up and down the keys of the piano. Warburton held his
breath and waited. He had heard Tosti's _Ave Maria_ many times, but he
never will forget the manner in which it was sung that night. The
songstress was care-free and among persons she knew and liked, and she
put her soul into that magnificent and mysterious throat of hers, And
throbbing all through the song was the vibrant, loving voice of the
violin. And when the human tones died away and the instruments ceased
to speak, Warburton felt himself swallowing rapidly. Then came
Schumann's _Traumerei_ on the strings, Handel's _Largo_, Grieg's
_Papillon_, and a _ballade_ by Chaminade. Then again sang the
prima-donna; old folksy songs, sketches from the operas grand and
light, _Faust_, _The Barber of Seville_, _La Fille de Madame Angot_. In
all his days Warburton had never heard such music. Doubtless he
_had_--even better; only at this period he was in love. The imagination
of love's young dream is the most stretchable thing I know of.
Seriously, however, he was a very good judge of music, and I am
convinced that what he heard was out of the ordinary.
But I must guide my story into the channel proper.
During the music Karloff and Colonel Annesley drifted into the latter's
study. What passed between them I gathered from bits recently dropped
by Warburton.
"Good God, Karloff, what a net you have sprung about me!" said the
colonel, despairingly.
"My dear Colonel, you have only to step out of it. It is the eleventh
hour; it is not too late." But Karloff watched the colonel eagerly.
"How in God's name can I step out of it?"
"Simply reimburse me for that twenty thousand I advanced to you in good
faith, and nothing more need be said." The count's Slavonic eyes were
half-lidded.
"To give you back that amount will leave me a beggar, an absolute
beggar, without a roof to shelter me. I am too old for the service, and
besides, I am physically incapacitated. If you should force me, I could
not meet my note save by selling the house my child was born in. Have
you discounted it?"
"No. Why should I present it at the bank? It does not mature till next
Monday, and I am in no need of money."
"What a wretch I am!"
Karloff raised his shoulders resignedly.
"My daughter!"
"Or my ducats," whimsically quoted the count. "Come, Colonel; do not
waste time in useless retrospection. He stumbles who looks back. I have
been thinking of your daughter. I love her, deeply, eternally."
"You love her?"
"Yes. I love her because she appeals to all that is young and good in
me; because she represents the highest type of womanhood. With her as
my wife, why, I should be willing to renounce my country, and your
indebtedness would be crossed out of existence with one stroke of the
pen."
The colonel's haggard face grew light with sudden hopefulness.
"I have been," the count went on, studying the ash of his cigar, "till
this night what the world and my own conscience consider an honorable
man. I have never wronged a man or woman personally. What I have done
on the order of duty does not agitate my conscience. I am simply a
machine. The moral responsibility rests with my czar. When I saw your
daughter, I deeply regretted that you were her father."
The colonel grew rigid in his chair.
"Do not misunderstand me. Before I saw her, you were but the key to
what I desired. As her father the matter took on a personal side. I
could not very conscientiously make love to your daughter and at the
same time--" Karloff left the sentence incomplete.
"And Betty?"--in half a whisper.
"Has refused me,"--quietly. "But I have not given her up; no, I have
not given her up."
"What do you mean to do?"
Karloff got up and walked about the room. "Make her my wife,"--simply.
He stooped and studied the titles of some of the books in the cases. He
turned to find that the colonel had risen and was facing him with
flaming eyes.
"I demand to know how you intend to accomplish this end," the colonel
said. "My daughter shall not be dragged into this trap."
"To-morrow night I will explain everything; to-night,
nothing,"--imperturbably.
"Karloff, to-night I stand a ruined and dishonored man. My head, once
held so proudly before my fellow-men, is bowed with shame. The country
I have fought and bled for I have in part betrayed. But not for my
gain, not for my gain. No, no! Thank God that I can say that! Personal
greed has not tainted me. Alone, I should have gone serenely into some
poor house and eked out an existence on my half-pay. But this child of
mine, whom I love doubly, for her mother's sake and her own,--I would
gladly cut off both arms to spare her a single pain, to keep her in the
luxury which she still believes rightfully to be hers. When the fever
of gaming possessed me, I should have told her. I did not; therein lies
my mistake, the mistake which has brought me to this horrible end.
Virginius sacrificed his child to save her; I will sacrifice my honor
to save mine from poverty. Force her to wed a man she does not love?
No. To-morrow night we shall complete this disgraceful bargain. The
plans are all finished but one. Now leave me; I wish to be alone."
"Sir, it is my deep regret--"
"Go; there is nothing more to be said."