payment for his services; but it is equally true that for every penny
he laid out he was reimbursed by Russia.)
Karloff placed the packet on the table, first taking off the note,
which he carelessly tossed beside the bank-notes.
"You will observe that I have not bothered with having your note
discounted. I have fulfilled my part of the bargain; fulfil yours." The
count thrust his trembling hands into his trousers pockets. He desired
to hide this embarrassing sign from his accomplice.
Annesley went to a small safe which stood at the left of the fireplace
and returned with a packet somewhat bulkier than the count's. He
dropped it beside the money, shudderingly, as though he had touched a
poisonous viper.
"My honor," he said simply. "I had never expected to sell it so cheap."
There was a pause, during which neither man's gaze swerved from the
other's. There was not the slightest, not even the remotest, fear of
treachery; each man knew with whom he was dealing; yet there they
stood, as if fascinated. One would have thought that the colonel would
have counted his money, or Karloff his plans; they did neither. Perhaps
the colonel wanted Karloff to touch the plans first, before he touched
the money; perhaps Karloff had the same desire, only the other way
around.
[Illustration: "I am simply Miss Annesly's servant."--ACT III.]
The colonel spoke.
"I believe that is all" he said quietly. The knowledge that the deed
was done and that there was no retreat gave back to him a particle of
his former coolness and strength of mind. It had been the thought of
committing the crime that had unnerved him. Now that his bridges were
burned, a strange, unnatural calm settled on him.
The count evidently was not done. He moistened his lips. There was a
dryness in his throat.
"It is not too late" he said; "I have not yet touched them."
"We shall not indulge in moralizing, if you please," interrupted the
colonel, with savage irony. "The moment for that has gone by."
"Very well." Karloff's shoulders settled; his jaws became aggressively
angular; some spirit of his predatory forebears touched his face here
and there, hardening it. "I wish to speak in regard to your daughter."
"Enough! Take my honor and be gone!" The colonel's voice was loud and
rasping.
Karloff rested his hands on the table and inclined his body toward the
colonel.
"Listen to me," he began. "There is in every man the making and the
capacity of a great rascal. Time and opportunity alone are needed--and
a motive. The other night I told you that I could not give up your
daughter. Well, I have not given her up. She must be my wife."
"Must?" The colonel clenched his hands.
"Must. To-night I am going to prove myself a great rascal--with a great
motive. What is Russia to me? Nothing. What is your dishonor or my own?
Less than nothing. There is only one thing, and that is my love for
your daughter." He struck the table and the flame of the student-lamp
rose violently. "She must be mine, mine! I have tried to win her as an
honorable man tries to win the woman he loves; now she must be won by
an act of rascality. Heaven nor hell shall force me to give her up.
Yes, I love her; and I lower myself to your level to gain her."
"To my level! Take care; I am still a man, with a man's strength,"
cried the colonel.
Karloff swept his hand across his forehead. "I have lied to myself long
enough, and to you. I can see now that I have been working solely
toward one end. My country is not to be considered, neither is yours.
Do you realize that you stand wholly and completely in my power?" He
ran his tongue across his lips, which burned with fever.
"What do you mean?"--hoarsely.
"I mean, your daughter must become my wife, or I shall notify your
government that you have attempted to betray it."
"You dishonorable wretch!" The colonel balled his fists and protruded
his nether lip. Only the table stood between them.
"That term or another, it does not matter. The fact remains that you
have sold to me the fortification plans of your country; and though it
be in times of peace, you are none the less guilty and culpable. Your
daughter shall be my wife."
"I had rather strangle her with these hands!"--passionately.
"Well, why should I not have her for my wife? Who loves her more than
I? I am rich; from hour to hour, from day to day, what shall I not plan
to make her happy? I love her with all the fire and violence of my race
and blood. I can not help it. I will not, can not, live without her!
Good God, yes! I recognize the villainy of my actions. But I am mad
to-night."
"So I perceive." The colonel gazed wildly about the walls for a weapon.
There was not even the usual ornamental dagger.
A window again stirred mysteriously. A few drops of rain plashed on the
glass and zigzagged down to the sash.
"Sooner or later your daughter must know. Request her presence. It
rests with her, not with you, as to what course I must follow." Karloff
was extraordinarily pale, and his dark eyes, reflecting the dancing
flames, sparkled like rubies.
He saw the birth of horror in the elder's eyes, saw it grow and grow.
He saw the colonel's lips move spasmodically, but utter no sound. What
was it he saw over his (the count's) shoulders and beyond?
Instinctively he turned, and what he saw chilled the heat of his blood.
There stood the girl, her white dress marble-white against the dark
wine of the portiere, an edge of which one hand clutched convulsively.
Was it Medusa's beauty or her magic that turned men into stone? My
recollection is at fault. At any rate, so long as she remained
motionless, neither man had the power to stir. She held herself
perfectly erect; every fiber in her young body was tense. Her beauty
became weirdly powerful, masked as it was with horror, doubt, shame,
and reproach. She had heard; little or much was of no consequence. In
the heat of their variant passions, the men's voices had risen to a
pitch that penetrated beyond the room.
Karloff was first to recover, and he took an involuntary step toward
her; but she waved him back disdainfully.
"Do not come near me. I loathe you!" The voice was low, but every note
was strained and unmusical.
He winced. His face could not have stung or burned more hotly had she
struck him with her hand.
"Mademoiselle!"
She ignored him. "Father, what does this mean?"
"Agony!" The colonel fell back into his chair, pressing his hands over
his eyes.
"I will tell you what it means!" cried Karloff, a rage possessing him.
He had made a mistake. He had misjudged both the father and the child.
He could force her into his arms, but he would always carry a burden of
hate. "It means that this night you stand in the presence of a
dishonored parent, a man who has squandered your inheritance over
gambling tables, and who, to recover these misused sums, has sold to me
the principal fortification plans of his country. That is what is
means, Mademoiselle."
She grasped the portiere for support.
"Father, is this thing true?" Her voice fell to a terror-stricken
whisper.
"Oh, it is true enough," said Karloff. "God knows that it is true
enough. But it rests with you to save him. Become my wife, and yonder
fire shall swallow his dishonor--and mine. Refuse, and I shall expose
him. After all, love is a primitive state, and with it we go back to
the beginning; before it honor or dishonor is nothing. To-night there
is nothing, nothing in the world save my love for you, and the chance
that has given me the power to force you to be mine. What a fury and a
tempest love produces! It makes an honorable man of the knave, a rascal
of the man of honor; it has toppled thrones, destroyed nations,
obliterated races. ... Well, I have become a rascal. Mademoiselle, you
must become my wife." He lifted his handsome head resolutely.
Without giving him so much as a glance, she swept past him and sank on
her knees at her father's side, taking his hands by the wrists and
pressing them down from his face.
"Father, tell him he lies! Tell him he lies!" Ah, the entreaty, the
love, the anxiety, the terror that blended her tones!
He strove to look away.
"Father, you are all I have," she cried brokenly. "Look at me! Look at
me and tell him that he lies!... You will not look at me? God have
mercy on me, it is true, then!" She rose and spread her arms toward
heaven to entreat God to witness her despair. "I did not think or know
that such base things were done... That these loving hands should have
helped to encompass my father's dishonor, his degradation! ... For
money! What is money? You knew, father, that what was mine was likewise
yours. Why did you not tell me? I should have laughed; we should have
begun all over again; I could have earned a living with my music; we
should have been honest and happy. And now!... And I drew those plans
with a heart full of love and happiness! Oh, it is not that you
gambled, that you have foolishly wasted a fortune; it is not these that
hurt here,"--pressing her heart. "It is the knowledge that you, my
father, should let _me_ draw those horrible things. It hurts! Ah, how
it hurts!" A sob choked her. She knelt again at her parent's side and
flung her arms around the unhappy, wretched man. "Father, you have
committed a crime to shield a foolish act. I know, I know! What you
have done you did for my sake, to give me back what you thought was my
own. Oh, how well I know that you had no thought of yourself; it was
all for me, and I thank God for that. But something has died here,
something here in my heart. I have been so happy! ... too happy! My
poor father!" She laid her head against his breast.
"My heart is broken! Would to God that I might die!" Annesley threw one
arm across the back of the chair and turned his face to his sleeve.
Karloff, a thousand arrows of regret and shame and pity quivering in
his heart, viewed the scene moodily, doggedly. No, he could not go
back; there was indeed a wall behind him: pride.
"Well, Mademoiselle?"
She turned, still on her knees.
"You say that if I do not marry you, you will ruin my father, expose
him?"
"Yes,"--thinly.
"Listen. I am a proud woman, yet will I beg you not to do this horrible
thing--force me into your arms. Take everything, take all that is left;
you can not be so utterly base as to threaten such a wrong.
See!"--extending her lovely arms, "I am on my knees to you!"
"My daughter!" cried the father.
"Do not interrupt me, father; he will relent; he is not wholly without
pity."
"No, no! No, no!" Karloff exclaimed, turning his head aside and
repelling with his hands, as if he would stamp out the fires of pity
which, at the sound of her voice, had burst anew in his heart. "I
_will_ not give you up!"
She drew her sleeve across her eyes and stood up. All at once she
wheeled upon him like a lioness protecting its young. In her wrath she
was as magnificent as the wife of--Aeneas at the funeral pyre of that
great captain.
"She knew! That was why she asked me all those questions; that is why
she exacted those promises! Mrs. Chadwick knew and dared not tell me!
And I trusted you as a friend, as a gentleman, as a man of honor!" Her
laughter rang out wildly. "And for these favors you bring dishonor!
Shame! Shame! Your wife? Have you thought well of what you are about to
do?"
"So well," he declared, "that I shall proceed to the end, to the very
end." How beautiful she was! And a mad desire urged him to spring to
her, crush her in his arms, and force upon her lips a thousand mad
kisses!
"Have you weighed well the consequences?"
"Upon love's most delicate scales."
"Have you calculated what manner of woman I am?"--with subdued
fierceness.
"To me you are the woman of all women."
"Do you think that I am a faint-hearted girl? You are making a mistake.
I am a woman with a woman's mind, and a thousand years would not alter
my utter contempt of you. Force me to marry you, and as there is a God
above us to witness, every moment of suffering you now inflict upon me
and mine, I shall give back a day, a long, bitter, galling day. Do you
think that it will be wise to call me countess?" Her scorn was superb.
"I am waiting for your answer. Will you be my wife, or shall I be
forced to make my villainy definitive?"
"Permit me to take upon these shoulders the burden of answering that
question," said a voice from the window.
Warburton, dressed in his stable clothes and leggings, hatless and
drenched with rain, stepped into the room from the veranda and quickly
crossed the intervening space. Before any one of the tragic group could
recover from the surprise caused by his unexpected appearance, he had
picked up the packet of plans and had dropped it into the fire. Then he
leaned with his back against the mantel and faced them, or rather
Karloff, of whom he was not quite sure.
XXIII
SOMETHING ABOUT HEROES
Tick-lock, tick-tock went the voice of the little friend of eternity on
the mantel-piece; the waxen sheets (to which so much care and labor had
been given) writhed and unfolded, curled and crackled, and blackened on
the logs; the cold wind and rain blew in through the opened window; the
lamp flared and flickered inside its green shade; a legion of heroes
peered out from the book-cases, no doubt much astonished at the sight
of this ordinary hero of mine and his mean, ordinary clothes. I have in
my mind's eye the picture of good D'Artagnan's frank contempt, Athos'
magnificent disdain, the righteous (I had almost said honest!) horror
of the ultra-fashionable Aramis, and the supercilious indignation of
the bourgeois Porthos. What! this a hero? Where, then, was his rapier,
his glittering baldric, his laces, his dancing plumes, his fine air?
Several times in the course of this narrative I have expressed my
regret in not being an active witness of this or that scene, a regret
which, as I am drawing most of these pictures from hearsay, is
perfectly natural. What must have been the varying expressions on each
face! Warburton, who, though there was tumult in his breast, coolly
waited for Karloff to make the next move; Annesley, who saw his
terrible secret in the possession of a man whom he supposed to be a
stable-man; Karloff, who saw his house of cards vanish in the dartling
tongues of flame, and recognized the futility of his villainy; the
girl... Ah, who shall describe the dozen shadowy emotions which crossed
and recrossed her face?
From Warburton's dramatic entrance upon the scene to Karloff's first
movement, scarce a minute had passed, though to the girl and her father
an eternity seemed to come and go. Karloff was a brave man. Upon the
instant of his recovery, he sprang toward Warburton, silently and with
predetermination: he must regain some fragment of those plans. He would
not, could not, suffer total defeat before this girl's eyes; his blood
rebelled against the thought. He expected the groom to strike him, but
James simply caught him by the arms and thrust him back.
"No, Count; no, no; they shall burn to the veriest crisp!"
"Stand aside, lackey!" cried Karloff, a sob of rage strangling him.
Again he rushed upon Warburton, his clenched hand uplifted. Warburton
did not even raise his hands this time. So they stood, their faces
within a hand's span of each other, the one smiling coldly, the other
in the attitude of striking a blow. Karloff's hand fell unexpectedly,
but not on the man in front of him. "Good God, no! a gentleman does not
strike a lackey! Stand aside, stand aside!"
"They shall burn, Count,"--quietly; "they shall burn, because I am
physically the stronger." Warburton turned quickly and with the toe of
his boot shifted the glowing packet and renewed the flames. "I never
realized till to-night that I loved my country half so well. Lackey?
Yes, for the present."
He had not yet looked at the girl.
"Ah!" Karloff cried, intelligence lighting his face. "You are no
lackey!"--subduing his voice.
James smiled. "You are quite remarkable."
"Who are you? I demand to know!"
"First and foremost, I am a citizen of the United States; I have been a
soldier besides. It was my common right to destroy these plans, which
indirectly menaced my country's safety. These,"--pointing to the
bank-notes, "are yours, I believe. Nothing further requires your
presence here."
"Yes, yes; I remember now! Fool that I have been!" Karloff struck his
forehead in helpless rage. "I never observed you closely till now. I
recall. The secret service: Europe, New York, Washington; you have
known it all along. Spy!"
"That is an epithet which easily rebounds. Spy? Why, yes; I do for my
country what you do for yours."
"The name, the name! I can not recollect the name! The beard is gone,
but that does not matter,"--excitedly.
Warburton breathed easier. While he did not want the girl to know who
he was just then, he was glad that Karloffs memory had taken his
thought away from the grate and its valuable but rapidly disappearing
fuel.
"Father! Father, what is it?" cried the girl, her voice keyed to agony.
"Father!"
The two men turned about. Annesley had fainted in his chair. Both
Warburton and Karloff mechanically started forward to offer aid, but
she repelled their approach.
"Do not come near me; you have done enough. Father, dear!" She slapped
the colonel's wrists and unloosed his collar.
The antagonists, forgetting their own battle, stood silently watching
hers. Warburton's mind was first to clear, and without a moment's
hesitation he darted from the room and immediately returned with a
glass of water. He held it out to the girl. Their glances clashed; a
thousand mute, angry questions in her eyes, a thousand mute, humble
answers in his. She accepted the glass, and her hand trembled as she
dipped her fingers into the cool depths and flecked the drops into the
unconscious man's face.
Meanwhile Karloff stood with folded arms, staring melancholically into
the grate, where his dreams had disappeared in smoke. By and by the
colonel sighed and opened his eyes. For a time he did not know where he
was, and his gaze wandered mistily from face to face. Then recollection
came back to him, recollection bristling with thorns. He struggled to
his feet and faced Warburton. The girl put her arms around him to
steady him, but he gently disengaged himself.
"Are you from the secret service, sir? If so, I am ready to accompany
you wherever you say. I, who have left my blood on many a battleground,
was about to commit a treasonable act. Allow me first to straighten up
my affairs, then you may do with me as you please. I am guilty of a
crime; I have the courage to pay the penalty." His calm was
extraordinary, and even Karloff looked at him with a sparkle of
admiration.
As a plummet plunges into the sea, so the girl's look plunged into
Warburton's soul; and had he been an officer of the law, he knew that
he would have utterly disregarded his duty.
"I am not a secret service man, sir," he replied unevenly. "If I
were,"--pointing to the grate, "your plans would not have fed the fire."
"Who are you, then, and what do you in my house in this
guise?"--proudly.
"I am your head stable-man--for the present. It was all by chance. I
came into this room yesterday to get a book on veterinary surgery. I
accidentally saw a plan. I have been a soldier. I knew that such a
thing had no rightful place in this house.... I was coming across the
lawn, when I looked into the window. ... It is not for me to judge you,
sir. My duty lay in destroying those plans before they harmed any one."
"No, it is not for you to judge me," said the colonel. "I have gambled
away my daughter's fortune. To keep her in ignorance of the fact and to
return to her the amount I had wrongfully used, I consented to sell to
Russia the coast fortification plans of my country, such as I could
draw from memory. No, it is not for you to judge me; only God has the
right to do that."
"I am only a groom," said Warburton, simply. "What I have heard I shall
forget."
Ah, had he but looked at the girl's face then!
A change came over Karloff's countenance; his shoulders drooped; the
melancholy fire died out of his face and eyes. With an air of
resignation and a clear sense of the proportion of things, he reached
out and took up the note upon which Annesley had scrawled his signature.
Warburton, always alert, seized the count's wrist. He saw the name of a
bank and the sum of five figures.
"What is this?" he demanded.
"It is mine," replied the count, haughtily.
Warburton released him.
"He speaks truly," said the colonel. "It is his."
"The hour of madness is past," the Russian began, slowly and musically.
The tone was musing. He seemed oblivious of his surroundings and that
three pairs of curious eyes were leveled in his direction. He studied
the note, creased it, drew it through his fingers, smoothed it and
caressed it. "And I should have done exactly as I threatened. There is,
then, a Providence which watches jealously over the innocent? And I was
a skeptic!... Two hundred thousand dollars,"--picking up the packet of
banknotes and balancing it on his hand. "Well, it is a sum large enough
to tempt any man. How the plans and schemes of men crumble to the
touch! Ambition is but the pursuit of mirages.... Mademoiselle, you
will never know what the ignominy of this moment has cost me--nor how
well I love you. I come of a race of men who pursue their heart's
desire through fire and water. Obstacles are nothing; the end is
everything. In Europe I should have won, in honor or in dishonor. But
this American people, I do not quite understand them; and that is why I
have played the villain to no purpose."
He paused, and a sad, bitter smile played over his face.
"Mademoiselle," he continued, "henceforth, wherever I may go, your face
and the sound of your voice shall abide with me. I do not ask you to
forget, but I ask you to forgive." Again he paused.
She uttered no sound.
"Well, one does not forget nor forgive these things in so short a time.
And, after all, it was your own father's folly. Fate threw him across
my path at a critical moment--but I had reckoned without you. Your
father is a brave man, for he had the courage to offer himself to the
law; I have the courage to give you up. I, too, am a soldier; I
recognize the value of retreat." To Warburton he said: "A groom, a
hostler, to upset such plans as these! I do not know who you are, sir,
nor how to account for your timely and peculiar appearance. But I fully
recognize the falseness of your presence here. Eh, well, this is what
comes of race prejudice, the senseless battle which has always been and
always will be waged between the noble and the peasant. Had I observed
you at the proper time, our positions might relatively have been
changed. Useless retrospection!" To Annesley: "Sir, we are equally
culpable. Here is this note of yours. I might, as a small contribution
toward righting the comparative wrong which I have done you, I might
cast it into the fire. But between gentlemen, situated as we are, the
act would be as useless as it would be impossible. I might destroy the
note, but you would refuse to accept such generosity at my
hands,--which is well."
"What you say is perfectly true." The colonel drew his daughter closer
to him.
"So," went on the count, putting the note in his pocket, "to-morrow I
shall have my ducats."
"My bank will discount the note," said the colonel, with a proud look;
"my indebtedness shall be paid in full."
"As I have not the slightest doubt. Mademoiselle, fortune ignores you
but temporarily; misfortune has brushed only the hem of your garment,
as it were. Do not let the fear of poverty alarm you,"--lightly. "I
prophesy a great public future for you. And when you play that _Largo_
of Handel's, to a breathless audience, who knows that I may not be
hidden behind the curtain of some stall, drinking in the heavenly sound
made by that loving bow?.... Romance enters every human being's life;
like love and hate, it is primitive. But to every book fate writes
_finis_."
He thrust the bank-notes carelessly into his coat pocket, and walked
slowly toward the hallway. At the threshold he stopped and looked back.
The girl could not resist the magnetism of his dark eyes. She was
momentarily fascinated, and her heart beat painfully.
"If only I might go with the memory of your forgiveness," he said.
"I forgive you."
"Thank you." Then Karloff resolutely proceeded; the portiere fell
behind him. Shortly after she heard the sound of closing doors, the
rattle of a carriage, and then all became still. Thus the handsome
barbarian passed from the scene.