The lovely lady whose lace parasol P. C. Breagh had picked up at the
bottom of the Prussian Chancellor's staircase was driven, by the
tipsy-faced Jehu of a debilitated hack-cab, to a semi-fashionable
hotel situated in a graveled courtyard facing toward the Linden. The
bureau-manager looked out of his glass-case as she swept her rustling
draperies over the dusty Brussels carpets of the vestibule, and
muttered to the pale-faced ledger-clerk at his side:
"A representative from the firm of Müller and Stettig,
Charlotten-Strasse, has called three times to see the lady in Suite
35. With a jewelry account for payment, promised and deferred."
The clerk assented with a nod of the double-barreled order, and
reaching an envelope from a numbered pigeon-hole offered it for the
inspection of his superior.
"Baroness von Valverden," sniffed the bureau-manager, and in his turn
reached a squat red Almanach de Gotha from the top of a pile of
ledgers, and ruffled the leaves with an industrious thumb.
"It is as I thought--there is no Baroness von Valverden. Baron Ernst
von Schön-Valverden is a minor and a bachelor, private in the --th
Regiment of Potsdam Infantry of the Guard. This must be the
Frenchwoman I have heard of as mixed up in the scandal connected with
the death of Baron Maximilian at Schönfeld in the Altenwald some
years ago. He left Madame a lapful of thalers--I suppose she has
played skat with the money. Not that that matters if the hook-nosed,
long-haired Slav she has got with her upstairs has the cash to settle
with us! But if not----"
The manager's tone was ominous. The clerk scratched his nose with
the feather-end of his pen, and said admiringly:
"If not, the Herr Bureau-Director will give orders to detain their
valises and trunks?"
The bureau-manager smiled, and said, jerking his chin at another
envelope reposing in the numbered pigeon-hole:
"Send that up at once and let them know we will stand no nonsense.
Keep Müller and Stettig's back for the present. Understand?"
And the clerk nodded again, and whistled down a tube, and evoked from
regions below a brass-buttoned, gilt-braided functionary, to whom he
entrusted the missive indicated, which bore the monogram of the
hotel-company, and indeed contained their bill.
It was handed to Madame by the brass-buttoned functionary just as she
reached the ante-room of her second-floor suite of apartments. She
took it from the salver, and said without looking at it:
"Presently!"
The functionary gave a peremptory verbal message. She repeated:
"Presently, sir, presently.... At this moment I am exceedingly
fatigued!"
The brass-buttoned functionary begged to remind the gracious lady of
similar excuses previously received by the management. At this she
turned upon him the battery of her magnificent eyes. Always
economical of her forces, she had removed her torn tulle veil during
the cab-drive, and with a delicate powder-puff drawn from a jeweled
case dependant from her golden _châtelaine_, removed from her lovely
face all traces of emotion. Only a spiteful woman would have called
her thirty-five.... And the functionary was a man, despite his brass
buttons and gilt braiding. When she smiled, he caved in, bowed, and
left her. But he did not forget to leave the bill.
She had it in her hand as she entered the drawing-room of the suite
of apartments, one of those impossibly shaped,
fantastically-uncomfortable salons, possessing a multiplicity of
doors and windows, upholstered with rose-satin and crusted with
ormolu, such as are only seen in foreign hotels and upon the stage.
Despite the sultry heat of the July weather the windows were shut,
their Venetian blinds lowered, and their thick lace curtains drawn
over these. And in a rose-colored arm-chair with twisted golden legs
and arms and an absurd back-ornament like an Apollonian lyre, huddled
a dark, hawk-featured, powerfully built man of something less than
forty, wrapped in a short, wide coat lined, cuffed, and collared with
black Astrakhan; wearing a traveling-cap similarly lined, and
presenting the appearance of one who suffers from a cold of the
snuffly, catarrhal kind.
He sneezed as Madame surged across the threshold, and would have told
her to shut the door, only that she divined his intention and
forestalled him, throwing her parasol upon a sofa and sinking into a
chair as ridiculous as his own. Yet when her wealth of pale-hued
draperies poured over it, and the ripe outlines of her voluptuous
form concealed its crudities of design and coloring, it could be
forgiven for being in bad taste.
She looked in silence at the traveling-cap, not at its sulky wearer,
until, conscious of her sustained regard, he raised his hand to his
head. In haste then, as though she dreaded the shock of his
purposeful abstention from the customary courtesy, she said:
"Do not take it off! Pray keep it on!"
"Thanks!" He uttered the word laconically, drooping his immense,
black-lashed eyelids over his fierce and staring eyes. They, too,
were black, with the white, hard glitter of polished jet; black also
were the great curved eyebrows, the coarse and shining hair that fell
to his shoulders, the parted mustache, and the wedge-shaped beard
that depended from his boldly curved chin. Rippling in small,
regular waves, suggestive of the labor of a primitive sculptor's
chisel, the inky _chevelure_ of this man with the cold,--taken in
conjunction with his large, aquiline nose, deep chest, fleshy torso,
and thick muscular limbs, reproduced the type of an ancient Assyrian
warrior, as represented in some carved and painted wall-frieze of
Nineveh or Babylon, marching in a triumphant procession of
Shalmaneser or Sennacherib. Even the conical head-dress was
reproduced by the modern cap with ear-pieces, and turned-up border;
and the deep yellowish-white of the alabaster in which the ancient
sculptor wrought his bas-relief was reproduced in thick, smooth,
unblemished skin.
Handsome as he undoubtedly was in his exotic, Oriental style, even in
spite of influenza, Madame contemplated him with ill-concealed
distaste. To a woman who loves, what matters the temporary
thickening of the beloved object's profile, even when accompanied by
attacks of sneezing and a running at the nose and eyes? She can wait
the day when his voice will clear, and his leading feature will
regain its former beauty. That is, as long as she continues to love.
The passion of this man and this woman had in its brief time burned
high and fiercely. So does a fire of paper or straw. Now Passion
lay dying, and Satiety and Weariness were the only watchers by the
death-bed. Every twenty-four hours that passed over the heads of the
couple brought nearer the hour when these would give place to Hatred
and Dislike. And meanwhile both were infinitely hipped.
"Every window.... Every curtain.... Must we, then, asphyxiate?..."
At the end of her patience, she made an angry gesture as though to
loosen the ribbon of mauve velvet that held a diamond locket at the
base of her round white throat, bit her full lip--and let her hand
drop idly into her silken lap again.
Her companion stretched out a pair of muscular, but shortish legs,
encased in dark green trousers with braided side-stripes, and looked
with interest at his patent boots. Then he answered, speaking with a
drawling, nasal accent:
"Unless M. de Bismarck has supplied you with the means of averting a
singularly-unpleasant catastrophe, it may be that the answer to your
question should be 'Yes'!"
She understood that he questioned, and said, drooping her proud,
languorous eyes under the hard black stare of his:
"You would be wiser to speak in a lowered tone, when you refer
to--that personage. One does not trifle with him--here or elsewhere!"
"The Pomeranian bear," said her companion, pouting a slightly swollen
lip, and dabbing gingerly at his reddened nostrils with a voluminous
cambric handkerchief exhaling the heavy perfume of opoponax, "has
claws and fangs. Also a hug, in which friends of mine have stifled.
But they were men and you are an enchanting woman!" He removed his
cap and bowed; resuming: "Besides you went to M. le Ministre with a
trump in your hand--a little Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud.
Have you played her, may I ask?"
He got up, pocketing his handkerchief, came over to her and stood
beside her, in the upright attitude which called attention to the
disproportion between his huge torso and his too-short legs. He held
his furred cap upon his hip with one hand, and with the other stroked
his waved wedge-beard. The rasping sound made by his heavily-ringed
fingers as they passed through the thick, crisp hairs irritated her
to anguish. Yet not so long ago it had thrilled her to sensuous
ecstasy.
"I played the girl--and I have lost!" Almost against her will a cry
broke from her. "My God! what things he said to me! My God! what
humiliations we women endure for men!"
"I had imagined, my Adelaide," said he of the Assyrian hair and
profile, showing in a smile a double row of teeth so perfect that
they struck the imagination as being carved out of two solid curves
of ivory--"that you were playing for your own advantage--even when
you played my game. Did M. le Comte mention me at any point of the
interview?"
She started at the unexpected question. Her voice shook a little in
the reply.
"He said that he had heard--that M. de Straz had lately visited
Berlin. That his agents would tell him. Of course!"
"He said nothing of--a flying visit of mine to Sigmaringen?"
She answered hastily:
"I think not. No! I am quite certain he did not."
"No?"
Straz sniffed and whipped out his handkerchief, grumbling:
"Yet the purport of my mission to that South German crow's-nest was
known to him--here in Berlin--I can prove it!--by nightfall of the
day I interviewed the Prince." He added, trumpeting in his
handkerchief, "Of course, M. Bismarck has spies everywhere. But all
the same it was quick work!"
Her face was immovable. No guilty flush stained its smooth ivory
surface. Only the lines about her scarlet mouth sharpened, that was
all.
Straz went on, peevishly, strolling to the fireplace, and leaning an
elbow on the corner of the mantelshelf.
"I suppose they call that princely hospitality--to send a man who has
traveled night and day, and is decanted out of a crazy
railway-station droschke at the door of their confounded Stammschloss
at five o'clock in the morning--to an inn!"
She said in a velvet tone of amorous insinuation, and with a glance
of sleepy fire:
"To an inn where Love lay waiting!..."
"Truly," he admitted, "but how were they to know that you were there?
What possible connection could have been imagined between two chance
travelers--I--arriving from Paris--you coming from Berlin?
Besides--to send me to a summer tavern on the banks of the
Danube!--when they have two hundred bedrooms at the Schloss! If that
is princely hospitality, I tell you that I spit upon it! I grind it
under the heel of my boot!"
Her nostrils dilated with disgust as he demonstrated by spitting on
the hearthrug. She said, meeting his angry black stare with eyes
that were of the color of tawny wine:
"The Prince cannot have regretted his omission to accommodate you
with an apartment, when the Emperor's message was made known to him!"
He demanded:
"Am I a hired bravo? _Pardieu_! your words suggest it. Were either
of the old man's sons in danger personally, from me? Not at all! I
but repeated a lesson--gave a warning as it had been given.... But I
understand--you have been chagrined by the nature of your reception
from the Federal Chancellor!"
She returned, now flushed and breathing deeply:
"It is true. I suffocate at the recollection. Give me time to
breathe!"
She rose. Straz said, going over to her, taking both her hands,
kissing them and replacing her in her chair:
"Compose yourself. Let me understand the attitude M. le Ministre is
taking. I need not remind you that not until I had learned from you
that, through the lamented Count Valverden, you were sufficiently
acquainted with M. de Bismarck to obtain an interview, did I suggest
that you should seek one. Well, you did, and it has taken place.
You told him of the little episode I witnessed in January--on the day
of the funeral of Victor Noir at Neuilly. Monseigneur the Prince
Imperial was riding with his governor and escort--the Avenue of the
Champs Elysées was blocked by troops. A charming girl threw M. Lulu
a bunch of violets--made a little scene of loyalty and enthusiasm in
contrast with the unamiable attitude of the crowd assembled. An
equerry dismounted and gave the flowers to Monseigneur. He carried
them with him as he galloped toward the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing of
importance in that, perhaps, had he not afterward sent for the
equerry who had picked up the flowers, and said to him, blushing,
'_Pray tell me who was she?_' So skilled a master of phrases as M.
de Bismarck could hardly have undervalued the question from the heir
to an Empire, taken in combination with the blush. Or discounted the
importance of the fact that, later, when the equerry brought him the
information that the charming unknown was the daughter and only child
of a certain gallant Colonel commanding the 777th Regiment of Mounted
Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard--at that moment quartered at
Versailles,--Monseigneur said, with another blush as ingenuous as the
first, 'I am glad she is the daughter of so brave a soldier!
Possibly I may meet her one of these days.' Being told that her
baptismal name was 'Juliette' he blushed once more, and wrote it
down,--together with Mademoiselle's surname and address,--in a little
memorandum-book he habitually carries.... And there, my exquisite
Adelaide--if your narrative style did credit to my teaching, the
interest of M. de Bismarck should have been engaged."
She lowered her chin and drooped her somber eyelids, and said with
curling lips:
"It was. He took out his watch, and told me: 'I can hear you for
three minutes longer! Has the Prince Imperial--with the
disinterested assistance of those about him, altered that possibility
into a certainty?' I explained to him then that nothing further had
come of the _rencontre_,--though measures had been taken to preserve
Monseigneur's interest from dying for lack of excitement, bouquets of
violets being sent to him at regular intervals, with a slip of paper
attached to the stems, upon which had been written in an unformed,
girlish hand--'_From one who prays for the Hope of France!_'
"And then?..."
"Then M. de Bismarck spoke, keeping his thumb all the time on the
watch-dial: 'So! The girl plays the part of an ingenue for the
present! Will she keep these airs of candor and innocence when she
has got her claws on that poor stripling? And do you suggest that
the Prussian Secret Service should supply her with funds for the
carrying out of her design, whatever it may be? Are we to lay our
heads together, like the Brethren in the libretto of Mehul's opera
"Joseph," and sing in chorus: _This is the heir. Come, let us kill
him!_'"
"Even Beelzebub," said Straz, "can quote from Scripture when it suits
him. I suppose you were annoyed, and showed it--which was an error
of judgment on your part!"
"I rose up," said she, and suited the action to the word, "with
indignation, assuring M. de Bismarck that his suspicions were unjust.
That the young girl mentioned was of ancient family and
irreproachable morals, convent-bred and highly educated. And that I,
myself, being her nearest living relative of her own sex, was able to
vouch for the fact. I added that the interest displayed in her by
Monseigneur the Prince--who until that moment had never been known to
look at a woman--led me to conceive that by aid of a few deft hints,
a little discreet encouragement--another distant glimpse--a meeting
accidentally brought about in some retired spot favorable to the
revival of first impressions, an influence might be brought to bear
upon the Imperial boy which might develop his mind and mold his
character. Somehow in my agitation the name of Juliette de Bayard
escaped me. 'De Bayard,' exclaimed M. de Bismarck. 'So! You are
her mother!' Great Heaven!--the intolerable tone in which he uttered
the words! Only the most abandoned of her sex could have supported
the insulting irony of the look accompanying them. Choking, I took
my leave.... He accompanied me to the staircase, with a false
appearance of courtesy. As I turned to descend, he hurled the last
insult of all! Nicolas, do not ask me to repeat the sentences!--and
yet, I must have them written in another memory.... He twitted me
with my nationality before his secretary and servants. He likened me
to a mythological character with an unpronounceable name.... He said
only a modern mother would be infamous enough to devote her only
daughter to Venus Something-Or-Other.... Next to my husband, I
detest that man!"
Straz had been pulling at his moist red underlip as she raved out her
story in a frenzy of rage and resentment, intensified by the
necessity of speaking in a lowered tone. Now he dragged the feature
out as though it had been made of india-rubber, let it snap back, and
said, shrugging his bull's shoulders and getting up:
"You are a woman and he is--Bismarck! He does not for the moment
want the wares you desire to sell him. It is unlike him--the
diplomat who could encourage M. Benedetti to lay before him the
Emperor's _projet de traité_ in writing--and lock it away for use at
a future opportunity--not to be willing to secure an
advantage--placed before him with clearness and skill--in the newly
awakened fancy of a schoolboy who, if he lives, will be an
Emperor--for a charming and innocent young girl!" He pronounced
these words as though they were smeared with something sweet and
luscious, licking his lips gently, and rolling his dead black eyes in
sensual enjoyment. "As regards your husband, he has certainly not
replied to the letter of your solicitors, but why do you hate the
unlucky man?"
"Do you ask?" Adelaide demanded, with glittering eyes and heaving
bosom. "Did he not refuse to divorce me? Should I not have legally
borne the title of Baroness von Valverden if his sentimental
prejudices had not blocked the way?"
Straz pulled his waved beard, and said, delicately separating a
strand of it from the rest, and keeping it between his thick white
fingers:
"Sentimental, why sentimental? Do you not even give him credit for
sufficient spirit to resent being made ridiculous? The desire to be
revenged--you will not even allow him that?"
She bit her scarlet underlip and answered, breathing quickly:
"He was too good, too high-minded--too chivalrous--oh! 'tis
ridiculous, I admit!" for Straz commenced to titter silently,
screwing up the corners of his eyes and shaking his shoulders, as he
sat with his thick, short arms folded on his chest. "An idea to make
you hug yourself as you are doing. But true, nevertheless! He would
have said--at this distance of time I can still hear him preaching:
'_I will avenge the injury to my honor when I am confronted with my
enemy. I will not revenge myself upon the woman who deserted me for
him!_'"
The words came, not in her own voice. Straz left off sniggering. He
said to himself, considering her through narrowed lids:
"Those were De Bayard's actual words. I wonder, since she has
neither seen nor heard from him since she left him, how it is she
knew that they were spoken? Some obliging mutual friend may have
repeated them. Or she read them in some letter of his, written to
Count Valverden. That is quite possible. But the question is,
whether she would detest him so bitterly if her passion for him were
absolutely extinguished. She is even jealous when one speaks of
their daughter, whom he worships.... I will play her on this
string--it may be useful, who knows?"
Aloud he said:
"Detest your husband, dear friend, if it affords you entertainment.
Probably he deserves it, though women I have met who knew him vowed
him _un crème d'homme_, worthy of the name he bears." He smiled in
his beard, hearing her foot tap upon the shining parquet, and went
on. "Men have praised his gallantry and his disinterestedness----"
"'Disinterestedness!'" she mocked. "Truly--to the point of
fanaticism he is disinterested. Have we not to thank that
characteristic for the ruin of our plans?"
Said Straz:
"A little more subtlety upon the part of your solicitors, and you
might have found M. le Colonel less obstinately inclined to
discourage the idea of a reconciliation. To have entrusted a
portrait to the hands of the lawyers would have been an excellent
move. Once convinced that the thirteen or fourteen years that have
elapsed since you--parted--have increased rather than diminished the
beauty that once he worshiped--and I fancy De Bayard would have
accepted your terms!"
He sniggered, and waited as the violet shadows about her brilliant
eyes deepened, and she breathed more quickly. Then he went on:
"They were generous--I allude to the conditions. Ninety men out of a
hundred would have accepted them. For what has De Bayard to condone
that others have not winked at? You were a mere girl, weary of
separation from a husband who doubtless consoled himself after his
own fashion, for his detention in the Crimea. Bored to
desperation--condemned to spend your days in the care of a child, and
in listening to the imbecile grumblings of a sick old devotee,--point
out to me the woman, young, beautiful, brilliant, and ambitious--who
would not--in your place--have done precisely as you did?"
She threw her head a little backward, bringing into prominence the
superb modeling of her columnar throat and the heavy lines of the
lower jaw. Her wine-colored eyes considered him between their
narrowed lids. She savored his words, silently, with palpitating
nostrils, and rippling movements of the muscles of her tightly closed
lips. And the qualities of treachery and cruelty, mingling in her
strange character with sensuality, and pride, and recklessness, were
written upon her beauty as plainly as they are stamped upon the
individuality of a tigress, or a poisonous snake.
"You speak of weariness ... of boredom..." She spoke between her
teeth, accentuating the vowels and prolonging the sibilants:
"Nicolas, it was hellish--that _ménage_ at Auteuil!..." She clenched
the white hand that rested on the chair-arm and continued, looking
with burning eyes through Straz into the past.
"That woman--my husband's mother, with her parade of devotion for the
absent. With her ceaseless repetition of 'my son,' 'my son's child,'
and 'my son's wife!' ... Grand Dieu!--how she enraged me! How she
made me hate--hate--hate them!--yes! all three.... Perhaps myself
also, most bitterly of all!"
"We have a curious proverb in my country," commented Straz, with his
snigger: "'_I draw water from a well that has no bottom when I tell
my gossip of the faults of my mother-in-law!_'"
She said, with undisguised scorn:
"I am not a collector of curios from your country!"
"Ah, but wait! Hear the rest of it!" said Straz, dexterously
embroidering on the original: "'_But when my mother-in-law wishes to
acquaint my husband with my good qualities, she will write them with
the plume from a gnat's head, on the paper that wrapped a butterfly's
egg, when she has bought her ink at the shop where they sell none!_'"
Adelaide continued, ignoring the labored witticism:
"In the letter of farewell that I wrote to De Bayard I said '_Your
mother will console you, I have no doubt!_' ... How often I have
imagined I could hear her talking to him.... He would weep on her
knees, like a schoolboy. She would lead him to look at the child,
asleep in its cot by the side of her bed, and tell him, '_Do not
fear! She will not be like her mother! She will grow up candid and
discreet and virtuous!_' Everything that Adelaide was not, you
understand.... Ha, ha, ha! Absurd old creature! Were she not dead,
I should detest her still!"
Straz mentally commented: "The daughter has inherited the hatred,
unless I am mistaken." Aloud he said:
"The prophecy, if made, has not been fulfilled, my Adelaide....
Mademoiselle, if inferior to her mother in splendor and beauty,
certainly has been dowered with her elegance and charm." He bunched
the fingers of his right hand, kissed them, and launched the kiss,
conjecturally, in the direction of Paris. "A pocket edition of
Psyche before that little affair with Cupid! A rare jewel! A _chic_
type, give you my word!"
The daintily shod foot had beaten time, as Straz enlarged upon the
theme of Juliette's perfections, to what might have been the tune of
a tarantella: now it ceased. She laughed in the Roumanian's face,
and cried, still laughing:
"A child! ... A schoolgirl--who has seen no more of the world than
the pearl in the oyster! All this is too funny--_give you my word!_"
Said Straz, lolling his head against the chair-back and licking his
red lips cattishly:
"Ah, but when the pearl-diver opened the oyster, he said: '_Here is a
gem worth a Kingdom, or an Empire, when it shall be polished and
properly set!_'"
"'Or an Empire!'"
She echoed the three words, throwing her head back in imitation of
Straz's attitude, and looking at him with languid provocation. Then
she yawned, showing her perfect teeth and the tip of a rosy tongue,
and remarked with an air of boredom:
"My friend, whether your pearl be worth an Empire or a cabbage-plot,
your chance of proving its value is forever forfeited, thanks to the
obstinacy of M. de Bayard."
Said Straz:
"Our plan would have been easier to carry out,--had M. de Bayard been
more--complaisant."
She rose up, her beautiful face livid and gray under its artificial
roses. Her eyebrows writhed like little live snakes, her eyes burned
like wind-blown torches. She spoke, looking past her confederate in
the chair, and with a voice he barely recognized:
"His mother must have prayed her Saints for this," she said, "that I
should always fail in the moment when triumph seemed most sure. Max
Valverden would have married me--it is absolutely certain!--had not
Fate sent him back on leave from the Staff in Austria but a couple of
hours too soon. Weak, sentimental Max! always threatening extreme
measures. Who would have believed him capable of carrying out that
menace so often reiterated! But this I know. Had he confronted me
with what his letter termed '_the unmistakable proofs of my appalling
treachery,_' I would have convinced him even against the testimony of
his own ears and eyes. But De Bayard--but my husband!----"
She had forgotten Straz; she saw nothing but her own frustrated
ambitions, the dead body of the man whose suicide had robbed her of a
title, and the living husband whose stern rejection of her overtures
had left her forever outside the social pale....
"Do I not know the man he is! With another it would have been so
easy. He would have granted an interview,--I would have been
suppliant and humble--I would have told my tale in such a voice! ...
_You were away.... I was young and inexperienced.... I foolishly
yielded to the persuasions of another.... Once I had let Valverden
kiss me I felt myself smirched for ever. I fled with him because I
dared not meet your eyes!_"
Straz sniggered. She went on, not hearing him....
"He would have taken me to his heart again. Once reinstated there I
would have regained the _entrée_ to Society. For a woman who has
lived within the pale--even if she finds it better fun outside--it is
hideous to be _déclassée_. A few triumphs,--a little intriguing--and
I should have been received at Court.... For the Emperor is above
all a man of the world; and the Empress loves to surround herself
with beautiful and witty women. With gifts, talents, charm like
mine, I should have carried all before me!--I should have reigned--I
should have drunk the wine of Success from a goblet of diamond."
"Without doubt," agreed Straz, "had M. le Colonel consented to
receive you. Yet I contend, his refusal is a hopeful sign, if it
means that he is afraid."
She winced as though he had thrust a knife in her side, and cried out:
"Afraid! You do not know him.... No!--I tell you, that it is to him
as though I had never existed.... Did we meet, he would look me in
the face--pass me by without the twitch of a muscle--without the
flicker of a glance.... But you have shown me how I may reach his
heart--and one day I shall thrust my hand into his breast and tear it
out and trample on it.... It is she--my daughter--who will
accomplish this!..."
Said Straz, pushing back his chair, getting up and blowing his nose
loudly:
"Then the sooner we exchange these avenues of dusty lime-trees,
choked with crowds of bellowing Teutons, for the boulevards of Paris,
the better. We shall, of course, be forced to return by a _détour
via_ Brussels--the Rhine Valley railways being reserved for the
transport of troops. Passports can be had on application to the
usual authorities. The only insuperable obstacle to our departure
is--the bill!"
Madame came back to consciousness of sordid things as the Roumanian
ostentatiously turned out his trouser-pockets.
"You are at an _impasse_ for lack of funds?" she asked him.
"Upon my life, my soul!" Straz smilingly assured her, "I am at
present without a radish! A sum of two thalers negotiable currency
constitutes my stock of cash. Although, as I have told you, I carry
secreted on my person an order for"--he tapped his bosom--"ten
thousand francs payable from the Secret Funds of the Imperial
Government. This I tried to cash before I left Paris----" He
measured off an infinitesimal quantity of finger-nail and displayed
it to her. "Do you think I got a franc from anyone? No!--you know
better! The Emperor's methods are understood too well. And thus it
is that the disinclination of M. de Bismarck to finance our plan for
the union of two young and ingenuous lovers has hit me in the
midriff. A thousand curses on his niggardliness!"
As though prompted by some recollection of Adelaide's previous
display of tragic passion, he scowled portentously, spat at the
fireplace, then began to strut about, vaporing and waving his ringed,
hairy-backed hands.
"Penniless.... What damnable absurdity! The Emissary of a
Potentate! The Bearer of the Bowstring--with Life or Death in my
hand. For lack of cash I travel second-class to that accursed South
German Principality--I stoop to put up at a third-rate inn. My
Mission performed, I yield to the promptings of my ardent nature. In
the company of her who reigns sultana of my soul,--who for my sake
has shared the discomforts of that abominable caravanserai--I return
to the barbarous capital of the Hohenzollerns--I risk my person in
the streets of Berlin. Had my brain been cooler--had your image
glowed less seductively before my mental vision"--he rolled his black
eyes amorously and laid a thick ringed hand upon his breast--"it may
be that I should not have accompanied you,--that I might have hurried
back express to Paris--presented myself to my Imperial master--and
reaped the golden prize!"
"Say rather," responded Madame, in a tone not untinged with acrimony,
"that as the result of your unsuccessful endeavor to enlist the
interest of M. de Bismarck in that charming plan to unite two
ingenuous young people--you are placed in a position that is not
without unpleasant possibilities. My _beaux yeux_ are less to blame
than your ambition '_to kill_,' as the English say, '_two birds with
one stone!_' You----"
"Say 'we,' not 'you,' my divine Adelaide," corrected Straz, with
tender insistence, "for if not in actuality husband and wife, we are
thus inscribed upon the bureau-register. 'One in sorrow, one in
joy,' to quote a poet of my nation. I wish you were acquainted with
the verses of Stepan Mieciwycz. They would afford you exquisite
delight."
"Possibly," said Madame, with an ominous hardening of the facial
muscles, and a whiteness about the lips. "What does not afford me
delight is that these brigands downstairs have threatened to seize
our luggage if their claim is not satisfied within an hour."
"_Sapristi!_" commented the Roumanian. "A beautiful imbroglio!
And--as I have no luggage--beyond a traveling valise," he added with
a gentle snigger, "your trunks, bonnet-boxes, imperials,
traveling-bags, and so forth--must become the prey of the management.
It grieves me to the soul that you should suffer this denudation at
the hands of these coarse Germans. But what I cannot prevent, I can
but deplore!"
"And if," she said in a vibrating voice of anger, "these coarse
Germans should lay hands upon your person, for the purpose of
ascertaining for themselves the state of your purse! ... What then?"
"What then?" Straz's cynical composure broke up.
"_Istenem!--Istenem_! Nothing could be more dangerous! My letter of
instructions from M. de Gramont, annotated in the Emperor's own hand!
The official letter, of introduction from the Minister to Prince
Antony--the copies of those three telegrams His Highness sent from
Sigmaringen--the order on the Privy Purse--all concealed in a silk
belt I am in the habit of wearing--these Prussians will find the
papers should they search me to the skin. Then I, _with my
wife_----" He italicized the sentences.
"One in sorrow as in joy, I think you said!" interpolated Madame,
bitterly.
"We should be arrested--dragged before official
interrogators!--imprisoned!--Oh! do not imagine I am laying on the
colors too thickly. Is it incredible that M. de Bismarck might
welcome an opportunity--pending the result of this war--to turn the
key on us?"
"Why on us?" demanded Adelaide. "Do _I_ wear a silken belt
containing incriminating letters? Orders on the Secret Funds ...
copies of Hohenzollern telegrams?"
Straz looked at her, and his black stare hardened suspiciously. The
swift Oriental blood that pigmented his eyes and skin, and fed the
luxuriant growth of hair upon him, leaped in the dark to the
conclusion that he had been betrayed. He said, smiling, and speaking
with a lisp, a trick of his that boded ill, had she but known it:
"Not to my knowledge.... I have never searched while you were
sleeping,--or spiced the draught that made the sleep profound."
"My thanks," she said, keeping her countenance magnificently, "for
the glass of mulled Burgundy I gave you when you returned from the
Schloss. You were suffering from chill--you shivered and burned
alternately.... Like a woman, I did what I could--and you are
ungrateful, like all other men."
"My soul," simpered Straz, "I adore you madly. But like every other
man, I am a son of Adam, and you are a daughter of Madame Eve. And a
little snake hisses in my ear whenever I am not looking at you: '_She
would be truer to her sex if she were false!_'"
"Nicolas! This is too much! No, no, I beg of you to let me leave
you!"
Adelaide had put her hand to her heart, given him a look in which
passionate tenderness seemed to strive with wounded pride, quitted
her chair, and hurried, the Roumanian hot upon her heels, to the door
communicating with the boudoir. Detained by his feverish grasp upon
her hand, prisoned by the muscular arm about her waist, she could
only reiterate her desire for freedom. Straz asseverated:
"Yes! when you have forgiven me! Pardon, beloved Adelaide! Life of
my life, you know we Slavs are naturally suspicious--it is always in
our blood!"
He thrust his face to hers, amorously ogling. The slight thickening
of the consonants, due to catarrh, made his passionate speech sound
grotesquely ridiculous. The approach of his mouth, the contact of
his breath, reminded the fastidious Adelaide that such colds could be
transferred. So she smiled dazzlingly upon him, and gently freed
herself from his enfolding tentacles, leaning her softly-tinted cheek
downwards to the shoulder her own overtopped.
"You are pardoned, my beloved one! But think with me how this bill
may be settled! What if you really should be in danger in this
place!"
He shrugged hopelessly, and ejaculated:
"_Sapristi_! I can conceive it possible.... But--hampered by the
lack of money, what are we to do?"
She said with a start, as if suddenly enlightened:
"Dearest, I have some jewels.... Think nothing of the sacrifice! ...
Will it not be made for him who is more to me than all?..."
"Angel! ... Now I know, indeed, that Adelaide is true to me! Pardon
thy slave, who dared to deem otherwise!"
Straz devoured her hand with kisses, became more enterprising as she
grew, or seemed to grow, more yielding. But she put him from her,
suffering her bright glance to linger on him amorously, saying in
tones of liquid sweetness, with a bewitching accent of rebuke:
"Be good now! I am tired, and must positively dine in my room
to-night. My maid will bring you in a few moments a case
containing--what I mentioned just now. Late as it is, shops are
still open ... there is a firm of jewelers--Müller and Stettig in the
Charlotten-Strasse, who will buy such things for ready money.... It
should bring sufficient to supply us with funds for a long time....
Poor Valverden paid eighteen thousand thalers for it!" She added as
Straz licked his lips appreciatively: "It is a star of emeralds and
brilliants you have often seen me wear."
"Thou art my star! O incomparable Adelaide!"
She pushed him from her, yet oozing with impassioned admiration. She
gently shut the boudoir-door--and noiselessly shot the bolt. Then
her face changed, and all her disgust for Straz, his cheap
compliments--his slovenliness--his arrogance and self-satisfaction,
his impecuniousness and his cold in the head, was written on her face
and expressed by every movement of her body. She ran across the
boudoir, abandoning her air of languor, burst into the bedroom
beyond, and aroused a dozing maid.
"Wake up, Mariette! Find me--it is in the red morocco jewel-case in
the brown leather imperial--the diamond star with emerald points!"
While the woman rummaged, the mistress swiftly reviewed the
situation. The cold, clear brain that dwelt behind that velvet mask
of sensuous beauty had formulated a plan for getting rid of the Slav.
He would be an enemy dangerous as a rattlesnake, she told herself.
But--trap your rattlesnake, and he cannot bite. On the other hand,
his subtle capacity for intrigue--his swift Oriental cunning--even
his masculine strength,--made of him a useful ally, even when he had
no more secrets for a clever woman to ferret out and sell.
For the brief telegram in cipher, dispatched by Madame to a
studiously unsuspicious address in Berlin before nightfall of the day
of the arrival in Sigmaringen--with the later-sent copies of
Gramont's letters--the formal introduction which had secured the
Agent from the Tuileries an audience of Prince Antony, and the four
pages of secret instructions margined with the Emperor's annotations,
had brought in a handsome sum of money, thanks to the potency of
mulled Burgundy heavily dosed with laudanum. Adelaide had known a
moment of deadly terror when the Slav's black eyes had looked at her
with that sinister stare of suspicion, and his conjectures had leaped
in the dark, so very near the actual verity. She felt no desire to
encounter that look again.
So she pondered, fingering the bulky roll of Prussian banknotes paid
her by Privy Councillor Bucher a few days previously,--how she might
best get rid of Straz without another scene. His Oriental cunning,
his childish vanity, his petulance and sensuality, his colossal greed
of money and money's worth, blinded her to the ruthlessness and
ferocity of his tigerish nature, and provoked her to brave a risk far
greater than she guessed.
She would get rid of him--play the game he had devised, without him;
and win, in spite of cold water thrown by M. de Bismarck. The trap
he had planned to catch the son of the Emperor should yet be set
successfully. Was not the intended bait of living maiden's flesh her
own?
She felt no pity for the innocence of the girl, or for the
inexperience of the stripling. She was curious to know how--under
given circumstances--they would comport themselves; she was eager to
bring to terms the Minister who had contemptuously rejected her
proposal--she thirsted above all for revenge upon the husband she had
wronged.
Straz stood in the way, therefore Straz must be swept aside. His
mission to Prince Antony performed, the Napoleon would have no more
use for the instrument. Perhaps that order on the Privy Purse would
never be paid?
She arrived at this conclusion as the maid brought the red morocco
jewel-case. She unlocked it with a key she wore in a bracelet, and
drew out a shagreen-covered box containing the vaunted ornament. It
had not been given her by her dead lover; the story of the thousands
spent on it was no more reliable than the doubleted emeralds, and the
thin central star of diamonds set flush with the gold setting of the
toy.
But it looked well; and Straz was no good judge of jewels, and she
had not paid Müller and Stettig the moderate sum demanded as its
price. The merchants had been rude enough to dun her, and when Straz
should appear and tender the article for sale to them, the manager
would summon a policeman, and the Roumanian would be detained. He
would refer to herself, but long before a representative of the firm
could appear to interrogate her, she would have paid the hotel-bill
and departed, leaving the price of the trinket in the hands of the
management. Flaws in the plan, no doubt, but on the whole it was
workable. She rose, took the star from the case stamped with the
too-revealing names of Müller and Stettig, glanced in the mirror,
left the bedroom and swept through the boudoir.
"Nicolas!" she whispered, unbolting the door noiselessly, and opening
it a little way.
"My Peri, I am here!" snuffled the impassioned Roumanian.
She opened the door a little further, and thrust out a white palm
cradling the glittering gewgaw. He pounced on it, leaving a kiss
instead.
"Remember, Müller and Stettig, 85 Charlotten Strasse. Fly!"
"Sultana, I depart upon the wings of Love, to return like the bee to
the rose, laden with golden pollen."
"Your wings, unlucky bee, will be clipped by a policeman," Madame
said inwardly, as the drawing-room door shut and the Slav's footsteps
crossed the little ante-room. There was a murmur of voices, that of
Straz raised as if in surprise or interrogation. Probably the
gilt-buttoned functionary had been lying in wait for him with the
hotel-bill. She listened a moment, heard no more, and went back,
saying to her attendant:
"Pack everything. We leave at once for Brussels."
The maid said, with peculiar demureness:
"And Monsieur, Madame?"
Her mistress told her:
"Monsieur has gone to call upon his bankers."
The maid responded with even greater demureness:
"Madame should know that in her absence Monsieur endeavored----"
Madame said hastily:
"Pay no heed. These are customs common in Roumania!"
The woman continued, bridling with all the scorn Lesbia's
waiting-maid feels for the penniless gallant:
"Monsieur endeavored to borrow of me ten thalers...."
Madame shrugged and bade her:
"Go on with your packing! Monsieur does not accompany us!"
And without the exchange of another word the mistress and maid
understood each other perfectly. The impecunious Straz was to be
jettisoned for the lightening of the ship.
Meanwhile, Fate willed the Slav should encounter on the threshold of
the ante-room the emissary of Messrs. Müller and Stettig, who had
called for the third time to demand payment of the bill. This being
offered for his inspection as the responsible male of the party,
threw unexpected light on the intentions of Adelaide.
"Sixteen hundred thalers," he murmured. "Reasonable, too--most
reasonable! I have seen Madame wearing the ornament, and admired it
very much. Yes, if you desire it, I will speak to the lady. It is
doubtless mere forgetfulness that has deferred the settlement of your
claim. Wait here!"
He unwound a knitted silk scarf that was folded round his bull-neck.
He turned down the collar of his Astrakhan-lined coat, and went back
with noiseless steps. The door of the boudoir was ajar. He
satisfied himself that Adelaide was in the bedroom beyond it. He
stepped in, glanced about him, formulating his plan, then locked the
boudoir-door, put the key in his pocket, crossed the room, and
knocked upon the door of the bedroom, swiftly stepping aside, so that
the door--which opened outward,--should conceal him from those within.
"Who is it knocks? Open and see!" he heard Madame command her maid
within the bedroom. The maid appeared, crossed the boudoir, found
the door fast, and returned to tell her mistress. But then she found
the door of the bedroom she had quitted was bolted on the other side.
There was no sound within, but a kind of rustling, and once or twice
a footstep on the carpet. So, with the patience of her caste, the
maid sat down upon a sofa until it should please her lady to undo the
bedroom-door.
Her lady was incommoded by the grip of Straz's thick hairy hands upon
her windpipe. He freed one in a moment--and then Adelaide was being
blinded by the folds of a silken scarf.... Long, wide, and elastic,
it served the Roumanian's purpose admirably. Perhaps it had been
useful in that particular way before. And as he rolled and twisted
it, he whispered sniggeringly in the little pearl-white ear that
jutted from between the crimson swathings, almost as though it had
been purposely left free:
"So, my Sultana!--so,--you would betray me!..."
Enveloped, she stammered through the silken meshes some barely
intelligible sentences. The folds tightened chokingly--and the words
died in a gasp.
"Mercy!... Forgive!..."
"Surely, my proud Sultana," said the thickish voice with the
catarrhal snuffle in it. "What will men not pardon to beauty such as
yours!"
She moaned and strove to tear away the smooth bands that were
suffocating her. He whipped a velvet ribbon from the toilet-table,
brought down her hands, and bound them behind her back. That little
shell-shaped ear was purplish by this time. At the point of losing
consciousness, she felt him softly groping for the treasure hidden in
her bosom--she heard the crackling of the roll of notes withdrawn.
"_Do not...!_" she tried to say, but no sound came from her but a
groaning; and through the roaring of her blood she heard him answer
back:
"Do not rob you! would you plead, my peerless Adelaide? Far from it.
I merely take from you what is my own! For--there was the taste of
opium in my mouth when I awakened in Love's embraces. And
conviction, stronger than proof, convinces me that I have been sold.
Else why this store of honey in the breast of the Queen of the
garden, while the black bee was sent roaming to gather store
elsewhere? Eh, eh! I think I could manage to guess at the reason
why I was to have been detained by those jewelers on suspicion of
theft! My Sultana would have vanished, leaving no address behind
her.... _Istenem!_ but the emerald star would have served your
purpose well!"
There was a silence. Rings of fire, stars of emerald whirled before
Adelaide's blinded vision.
"Do not be afraid, my Queen, I am not going to murder you!" chuckled
the thick voice in the little swollen blackening ear. "Only to spoil
your beauty a little--nothing more terrible. Your eyes will be less
clear, your skin less dazzlingly unblemished, after this experience.
You will never again look in your mirror without remembering me!"
Rocking and swaying, ready to fall, she was only kept upright by the
arm of Straz about her body. She felt him free that arm, shifting
her weight against his great chest, and as she lay blind and helpless
there, his snigger vibrated through her horribly. Then--the smooth,
slippery folds of the silk scarf tightened murderously, stopping all
breath, shutting out consciousness. Whelmed in an abyss of
Nothingness, she felt and knew no more....
"Madame is a little unwell," said Straz, who regained the
ante-chamber by the way of a dressing-room communicating with
Madame's bedroom. "She will call on Messrs. Müller and Stettig
to-morrow, and settle their account. Meanwhile"--for the
representative of the firm was beginning to expostulate--"she returns
the emerald-pointed star with her regrets." He added smilingly as
the relieved _employé_ gratefully pocketed the trinket: "Ladies are
not business-like in these little matters of money. But Heaven, who
inspired in man the desire to see them well-dressed, has conferred on
him the privilege of paying their bills."
He accompanied the jeweler's foreman down to the vestibule, chatting
agreeably. He carried no valise, so was allowed to pass out with the
man. Keeping one thick, hairy-backed hand thrust down into a pocket
of his Astrakhan-furbished shooting-jacket, close-clutched upon the
solid roll of Prussian banknotes, reft from that smooth and perfumed
hiding-place.