It lacked but a few minutes of midnight when Grey entered the
smoke-clouded air of the Café Américain. The great room was crowded and
the babel of voices and the clatter of glass and china were wellnigh
deafening. He stood for a moment near the door, looking about through
half-closed lids like one near-sighted. A dark, languorous-eyed woman,
gorgeous in scarlet silk and lace, smiled and beckoned him, but he
paid no heed. He forced his way between the closely aligned tables to
the centre of the room, glancing from right to left as he proceeded.
His imagination had pictured his correspondent as a youngish, fair
man, but he realised that his imagination was not to be relied on. He
must depend on being seen and recognised, since recognition on his
part was impossible. A waiter brushed against him, spattering him with
beer from jostled glasses. A pretty brunette in a white gown and a
great rose-trimmed hat of coarse straw seized his hand and pressed it
suggestively as she passed him on her way to the door. And then, over
near the mirrored wall to the right, he saw a man standing, his arm
raised to attract attention, a smile on his honest, sun-browned face;
and he knew it was “Jack.” He was tall and spare, all muscle and sinew,
and his hair was brightly red, as also was his rather close-cropped
moustache.
“Gad, man,” he exclaimed, as Grey came to him, “I fancied you weren’t
to be here.”
He spoke with the pleasant brogue of the North of Ireland, and his
voice and manner were as confidence-inspiring as had been his note.
Grey smiled, with something of embarrassment in his eyes. The very
frankness of the other man was disconcerting. It had been comparatively
easy to hide his simulation from the others, but now it was different.
This big, hearty fellow was not only all honesty himself, but he
inspired honesty--he demanded it.
“To tell the truth,” the American replied, feeling that a confession
was about to be wrung from him, “I’ve had a rather wretched day.”
Jack looked at him keenly, his lips pressed tight in cogitation, as
Grey ordered a _grenadine_.
“What’s the trouble, old chap?” he asked presently, throwing back his
head and sending an inverted cone of cigarette smoke ceilingward. “Tell
me about it; you don’t look well; you are pale and--by Jove! What’s the
matter with your voice? You don’t speak like yourself. If I didn’t see
you sitting there I’d fancy it was another man who spoke.”
“Would you, really?” Grey asked. The information, seeing that it
was necessary for him to keep up his masquerade for awhile, was
disconcerting.
“Really, you have quite lost something--or perhaps I should say you
have gained something. Your tone now has some colour, some modulation.
Yesterday you spoke like--you’ll pardon me, won’t you?--you spoke like
an automaton.”
“Would you mind giving me an imitation?” Grey laughed. “Oh, yes, I am
serious. I want to hear you. After awhile I’ll tell you why.”
“Since it is your pleasure, my dear Max,” Jack replied in an even drone
at low pitch, “I am only too delighted to do as I am bidden. There you
are! That’s not exaggerated the least bit, either.”
“Thank you,” Grey said; and then he sat for a full minute in silence.
He was impelled to make a clean breast of the whole astounding affair
to this man and ask his aid. Though he was unacquainted even with his
name he felt he could trust him. In this sudden and inexplicable faith
his aversion for Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald found its
antithesis. He nevertheless appreciated the importance of extreme
caution, and his judgment warred for the moment with his impulse.
Finally a truce was signed.
“Was yesterday’s tone an affectation or is today’s?” asked the Irishman
jocularly.
Grey took a sip at the pink contents of his glass.
“Neither,” he answered, seriously; “yesterday I was asleep; today I am
awake.”
“Tut, tut, man! Don’t talk in riddles,” the other protested. “You were
no more asleep last night at Maxim’s than you are this minute. By the
way, did you see your friend Sarema as you came in? She was sitting
quite near the door a little while ago.”
“Sarema?”
“To be sure. Come, come, my lad, has your mood changed as well as your
tone and voice? You certainly remember the odalisque from the Folies
Bergères.”
Grey’s eyes showed that his astonishment was unfeigned.
“Oh, but this is marvellous,” cried Jack, leaning forward, his arms on
the table. “You weren’t drunk, man. You--you certainly weren’t asleep.”
“What is your name?” Grey asked, suddenly.
“Fancy!” exclaimed the Irishman. “Have you forgotten that, too? John
James O’Hara, lieutenant in His Majesty’s Second Dragoon Guards, of
Kirwan Lodge, Drumsna, County Leitrim, at your service, sir. And you’ll
be telling me next, I suppose, that you don’t remember meeting me in
the smoke-room of the _Lucania_ the first day out of New York, and that
over two months ago.
“As God is my judge,” Grey answered, solemnly, “I have no recollection
of ever seeing you before tonight.”
O’Hara’s muscles stiffened and then relaxed. There was no incredulity
in his face, only wonder.
“And have you forgotten your own name, too?” he queried, after a moment.
“I never knew the name I am called by until today.”
“Gad, man, you’re crazy,” the Irishman commented, lighting a fresh
cigarette. “You’ve got me all of a tangle. I’m damned if you’re not
uncanny. And your name is not Max Arndt at all, then?”
“No.”
“And Herr Schlippenbach. He is not your uncle?”
“God forbid!”
“And the Fräulein von Altdorf is not your sister’s daughter, I suppose?”
“I never had a sister.”
The dragoon guard threw up his hands.
“Then, if it’s all the same to you,” he continued, “and not revealing
any State secrets, would you be so good as to tell me who you are?
Introduce yourself to me. For it seems that though we’ve been together
the better part of two months we’re still strangers.”
Grey made a rapid but careful survey of his neighbours. Under the
circumstances it might not be well to speak his own name where it could
be overheard. He took another drink of his _grenadine_ before replying.
“After all,” he said, “this is hardly the place for confidences. What
do you say to walking over to my hotel? We can have privacy there.”
And Lieutenant O’Hara readily consented.
At the door of the Hôtel Grammont a courier was in excited dispute with
the _portier_.
“But he will be here tomorrow, perhaps. Is it not so?”
“I cannot say. There is no Monsieur Grey here now, of a certainty.”
“You are sure? You are most sure?”
“Is it not that I have said it twenty--thirty--a hundred times?”
insisted the _portier_. “And you are not the only one who has asked.
There have been three others here, including an agent of police. Ah,
Monsieur Grey! He had better stay away, perhaps.”
When at length the room of the American was reached and the door locked
on the inside, Grey turned to his friend.
“Did you overhear the conversation below?” he asked.
“I caught snatches of it. A wire for someone, wasn’t it?”
“Yes; for me.”
“For you?” O’Hara stared. “Then why in God’s name didn’t you take it?”
“I couldn’t afford to, and yet I’d give a good deal to know its
message.”
“But it was for a person named Grey, I thought. You are Grey, then?”
“Yes.”
“And the police officer! He was looking for--you?”
“For me,” Grey confessed. “Now you can understand why I didn’t care to
talk in the café.”
O’Hara dropped into a chair.
“This is very interesting,” he said, and his blue eyes twinkled.
Grey, his hands in his trousers’ pockets, was standing before the
chimney-piece. His expression was very grave.
“I suppose,” he began, “that you think me rather a blackguard.
Appearances so far are against me, aren’t they? By my own admission
I’m here under an assumed name trying to evade the minions of the law,
who are hot-foot on my trail. Everything you thought you knew about
me I have informed you is false. Therefore you are not likely to be
predisposed in my favour. Consequently the story I’m going to tell
you now you’ll probably not believe. I’m free to admit that if the
situation were reversed I wouldn’t believe you; and yet--I--well, I
wouldn’t have taken you into my confidence if it were not that I’m sure
you’re a gentleman--an honest, high-principled, Irish gentleman who
loves right and is willing to fight for it.”
O’Hara smiled encouragingly.
“Drive ahead, my boy,” he urged; “the jury is absolutely unprejudiced.”
Then Grey plunged into a detailed narrative of that surprising day. He
told of his strange awakening and parenthetically gave his hearer an
idea of his position at home and a glimpse of his previous life. He
rehearsed his conversation with Frothingham; he repeated word for word
the cables he had sent to New York; he summarized the articles he had
read in the _Herald_; he described the passing of Herr Schlippenbach
and recited his death-bed communication, and finally he gave, as nearly
as he could remember it, the conversation between Lutz and Johann.
O’Hara listened with rapt interest, interrupting him now and then with
a question, at times smiling understandingly and at others scowling at
what he regarded as evidence of importance against the little group by
which Grey was surrounded. At the conclusion of the recital he sprang
up and impulsively grasped the American’s hand.
“You’ll come out on top yet, boy,” he cried, “and it’s John James
O’Hara that’ll help to put you there. I’ve heard of such cases as this
before. They’ve been drugging you, lad, that’s as plain as the nose on
my face, and your dear uncle, Herr Schlippenbach, do you mind, has been
the chief drugger. It was because he was too ill to do his work that
the effects wore off. Now that he’s gone they’re worried to death over
you. Sure, you’re not so blind that you can’t see that yourself.”
“But I don’t understand----”
“Of course you don’t. Neither do I. There’s a lot we have got to find
out. But two heads are better than one; and you just put a big bundle
of trust in mine.”
He was excited and his brogue, Grey thought, was delightful.
“What do you suggest?”
“In the first place it is probably best that I tell you what little I
know. Your memory, up until this afternoon, is a blank. Well, then,
I’ll give you the benefit of mine.”
O’Hara lighted another cigarette and, taking a deep inhalation, started
pacing the floor, his head bent thoughtfully forward.
“As I said,” he began, “we met in the smoke-room of the _Lucania_
on the afternoon of Saturday, the seventh of April. You told me
your name was Max Arndt, that you were born in Kürschdorf, the
capital of Budavia, where your uncle, Herr Schlippenbach, whom you
accompanied, had at one time been tutor in the royal family. You had
spent your life, however, in the United States, had been engaged in
the importation of German wines, I think you said, in New York, and
were now on your way back to your native town, where, by the death of
a relation, you had recently come into large estates. The man Lutz was
with you, but he appeared to be old Schlippenbach’s valet rather than
yours. On reaching Liverpool you were met by Captain Lindenwald, who
is of the royal household of the Kingdom of Budavia, and by the fellow
Johann. After about a week in London your party was joined by Miss von
Altdorf, who had been at school somewhere in Kent. You told me she
was your sister’s child, an orphan, and that your uncle and yourself
supported her.”
“Great God!” exclaimed Grey, amazedly, “and did I seem sane--rational?”
“Perfectly,” O’Hara answered; “you were the character to the smallest
detail. Your voice was the only peculiar thing about you. You spoke
like a deaf man, with practically no inflection.”
“Did you talk to Schlippenbach?”
“Oh, yes; frequently. He was really very clever. He had a wonderful
fund of general knowledge. There was scarcely a subject with which he
was not familiar. But his specialty was phrenology. He told me that
in his youth he had known Dr. Spurzheim, the pupil of Dr. Franz Gall,
the founder of the science, that he had studied under him and gone
very deeply into the matter. He was a chemist, too, and from something
he let drop one day I got the impression that he had experimented
considerably with anæsthetics, narcotics, and that sort of thing.”
“And to some purpose, apparently,” put in Grey. “But his object,
O’Hara? What in heaven’s name could have been his object? I never knew
him--never saw him to my recollection until he was dying.”
“Ah, lad, we haven’t got that far yet, but we’ll know before we’re
through.”
And then he went on with his story. He was with the quartet a great
deal in London, he said. He showed them about, and they were all very
appreciative. They stopped there until the middle of May and then they
moved on to Paris. Without any intention of prying into their affairs
he had observed that Herr Schlippenbach and Captain Lindenwald had a
good deal of correspondence with parties in Kürschdorf.
“And what was my attitude towards them all?” Grey inquired. “Was I very
sociable or was I reserved?”
“You were rather dignified,” O’Hara answered; “and now I come to think
of it, they treated you with considerable deference, though they
endeavoured to dissemble it whenever I was about. Miss von Altdorf
seemed quite fond of you, old chap, and it was amusing to note how
Captain Lindenwald insisted on making love to her at every opportunity,
only to be gently, but firmly, repulsed. As for that young woman I
found her most charming,--and you did too, apparently. Of course, as
she was your niece, you could take her to dine tête-à-tête and to
places of amusement unchaperoned, and you did very frequently, much to
Lindenwald’s annoyance. Whatever the plot is, Grey, I feel satisfied
that she is not in it.”
“And now what do you advise?”
“For the present at least to give no sign that you suspect anything.
You are well enough posted now, my boy, to go straight ahead. Give them
enough rope and they’ll hang themselves as sure as your name’s Grey
and mine’s O’Hara. Assume the tone I told you of, and they’ll never
suspect. They may be surprised, but they’ll be happy and they’ll be
unwary. Never take the initiative yourself. Leave it all to Lindenwald.”
“But what will they make out of it?” Grey urged, curiously. “Surely you
have formed some theory?”
“Yes, I have a theory,” O’Hara responded, “but it is probably just as
well for me to keep it to myself for a while.”
“What do you think this talk about ‘thrones’ and ‘mad princes’ means?”
“That is for us to find out. And unless I am more of a fool than I
think, it will very shortly develop. In the meantime you are anxious
about the answers to your cables, aren’t you? Since they are addressed
to Grey, you can’t accept them, that’s clear. But you shall know what
is in them just the same. I’ll undertake that for you.”
“But----”
“Never mind, lad; leave it to me.”
“And the box with proofs that Schlippenbach spoke of? That is
important.”
“To be sure. It is at the Gare du Nord in his name or yours, eh? I’ll
get it for you. But the key?”
Suddenly Grey remembered.
“There is a key in a wallet I found. Possibly that is it.”
“Possibly.”
And the thought of the wallet reminded him that a fifty-franc note and
some change was all the money he had in his possession.
“I’m a little short of funds,” he said. “Do you happen to know how or
where I have been in the habit of getting money when I needed it?”
O’Hara laughed.
“The whole thing is so absurd,” he explained, “as well as serious.
Fancy your not knowing what you have done every few days since you
landed! Johann has your letter of credit and gets you whatever you
desire. All that is necessary is for you to sign your name.”
When O’Hara had gone Grey sat for a long time brooding over his
extraordinary experience. His head was still aching, throbbingly,
and his nerves were still a-tingle. Whatever treatment he had been
subjected to its effects had not yet been entirely eliminated. He
undressed, got into his pyjamas and went to bed; but sleep was coy
and not to be won by wooing. He heard the clock strike two and three
and four, and he saw the first gray sign of dawn between his curtains
before he fell into a restless, troubled, unrefreshing slumber.
V
Mr. Herbert Frothingham had that evening been one of a dinner party of
six at Armenonville. He had sat between Miss Hope Van Tuyl and Lady
Constance Vincent, and across a plateau of primrose-coloured orchids
the charming Mrs. Dickie Venable had at intervals favoured him with
fleeting smiles. Nicholas Van Tuyl, sleek and ruddy, was at the left
of Lady Constance, who had for her vis-à-vis Sinclair Edson, a tall,
young, sallow-faced secretary from the United States Embassy.
“I hope you haven’t failed to observe the notabilities,” this
latter-named gentleman was saying as he daintily dissected his _carpe
au buerre noir_; “there are quite a number here this evening.” His pose
as mentor was apt to grow annoying at times, but the Van Tuyls had been
in Paris only two days, and father and daughter were alike interested.
“Oh, do show me that East Indian prince or whatever he is,” cried Hope
enthusiastically, her great dark eyes brilliant; “I’ve heard so much of
him. Is he here?”
“The Maharajah of Kahlapore? Yes, he must be here, surely. I never come
nowadays but he is.”
He turned his head and craned his neck in an effort to locate the Hindu
potentate. The piazza of the pavilion was, as usual, crowded. Every
table was occupied--and the throng was the acme of cosmopolitanism.
Five continents were represented. It was indeed a veritable congress
of nations. Monarchs, kings dethroned, and pretenders rubbed elbows.
Women of the world and of the half-world brushed skirts. Dazzling
toilets of delicate tints were silhouetted against coats of lustreless
black. Diamonds blazed; pearls reflected the myriad lights; gems of all
colours, shapes, and sizes glistened in the foreground and sparkled in
remote corners.
“Ah, there he is,” Edson discovered, speaking without turning his face;
“there, off to the right. You can just see his white turban over the
head of that Titian-haired woman in the blue gown.”
The whole party stared, stretching, twisting to get a glimpse.
“Rather insignificant, isn’t he?” observed Mrs. Dickie disparagingly.
“His turban accentuates his _café au lait_ complexion,” laughed Hope.
“But you should see him at finger-bowl time,” suggested Lady Constance,
who had lunched next to him and his suite that day at Paillard’s. “He
is most original.”
“Oh, tell us,” cried Hope pleadingly; “what does he do?”
“It must be seen to be appreciated,” the Englishwoman replied. She was
auburn-haired, generously proportioned, and rather stolid. Her tone was
even more of a refusal than her words.
“I’ll tell you,” volunteered Edson glibly. “He has a special bowl twice
the ordinary size and he plunges his whole face in it.”
“Horrors!” shrieked Mrs. Dickie; “he should be arrested for attempted
suicide.”
“But he isn’t the most interesting personage here by any means,” Edson
pursued, now thoroughly launched in the exercise of his _métier_;
“have you noticed the sallow-faced, heavy-browed and long-moustached
gentleman just three tables away, dining with the dark-bearded
president of the Chamber of Deputies?”
“The man with that enormous, gorgeously jewelled star on his breast?”
asked Miss Van Tuyl, leaning back and gazing over Frothingham’s
shoulder. “Oh, what a brutal face he has!”
“It is the Shah of Persia,” announced Edson; and then he glanced about
to revel in the effect of his revelation.
“He’s a beast,” commented Lady Constance, disgustedly, “though I
believe his manners have improved somewhat since he was here last.
Do you know when he was in Berlin some years ago he sat next to the
Empress Augusta at a State banquet, and whenever he got anything in his
mouth that was not to his taste, he just calmly removed it!”
“They say he thought nothing of putting his hands on the bare shoulders
of the women he met,” Edson added.
“I saw the King of the Belgians as we came in,” said Mr. Van Tuyl,
presently, as a waiter passed the _filet aux truffes_; “one sees him
everywhere, eh?”
“Oh, yes,” Edson hastened to observe; “he’s as omnipresent as the poor.
But did you see the woman with him? She’s the very latest, you know.
Was a _Quartier Latin_ model six months ago and is now regarded as the
most beautiful woman in Paris. _La Minette Blanche_, they call her. She
has a palace on the Boulevard Malesherbes and as many retainers as a
princess.”
“The old scoundrel!” exclaimed Mrs. Dickie, vindictively; “I don’t know
which is worse, the Shah or he. He gained a reputation as a wife-beater
or something, didn’t he? At all events I’ll bet the devil is keeping a
griddle hot for him down below, and it’s pretty near time he occupied
it.”
“How terribly spiteful!” laughed Frothingham; “His Majesty isn’t a bad
sort at all; a little fickle, perhaps, but with his love of beauty and
his opportunities you can hardly expect domesticity. And he’s done a
lot of good in his way.”
“Speaking of royalty, that is rather an odd condition of affairs in
Budavia, by the way,” suggested Nicholas Van Tuyl. “Did you see the
paper this morning? The King is very ill. Can’t live a fortnight; and
there is a question as to the succession. It seems that the Crown
Prince was kidnapped when he was five years old and nothing has ever
been heard of him. They don’t know whether he is alive or dead.”
“Oh, how interesting!” exclaimed Mrs. Dickie, putting down her fork to
listen. “And to whom does the crown go?”
“To King Frederic’s nephew, Prince Hugo; as thorough a reprobate, they
say, as there is in all Europe.”
“Wouldn’t it be funny if the Crown Prince should turn up at this
juncture?” suggested Edson; and there was something significant in his
tone.
“Has such a possibility been hinted at?” asked Van Tuyl.
“Well--” and Edson hesitated the briefest moment, “one can never tell.”
Whether intentionally or not, he gave the impression that he knew more
than he cared to divulge. “I had a call today from an officer of the
Budavian army. He is a member of the royal household.” He said this
with an air, and Frothingham muttered, “Snob!” under his breath.
“I suppose he spoke of the situation, eh?” asked Van Tuyl.
“Yes, of course, he referred to it. I met him last year in Vienna. His
call was purely social.”
“Is he to be in Paris long?” asked Mrs. Dickie, quickly. “Bring him to
tea next Tuesday.”
But Edson evaded a promise. He was listening to Frothingham, who was
saying:
“You can never tell when or where or under what circumstances a lost
man will reappear. After today I shall make it a rule not to believe a
man is dead unless I have seen him buried.”
“Why, whom on earth have you seen?” questioned Miss Van Tuyl. There was
just the slightest suspicion of a tremour in her voice, and her eyes
were apprehensive. The speaker, however, detected neither. He had, in
fact, quite forgotten, if he had ever heard, that there had been an
attachment between the man he had that day met on the _terrasse_ of
the Café de la Paix and the woman who sat at his side.
“Carey Grey, the absconder!”
The words struck her as a blow from a clenched fist. Her cheeks, which
had been a trifle flushed, went suddenly white as the damask napery.
Her jewelled fingers clutched the edge of the table. She felt that she
was falling backward, that everything was receding, and she caught the
table edge to save herself.
“Carey Grey!” repeated Nicholas Van Tuyl, in amazement. “Surely you
must have been mistaken!”
“Not a bit of it. I talked to him.”
“The devil!” exclaimed Edson and then apologised.
“You’d never know him,” Frothingham went on, after emptying his
champagne glass; “he has bleached his hair, and he is wearing a
bleached beard, too.”
“Oh, horrible!” This from Mrs. Dickie.
“Told a most remarkable story about not knowing anything for five
months; brain fever or something. I must admit he was very convincing.”
“I wonder if that is the man I knew?” Lady Constance broke in. “He
came over with an American polo team; he was a great friend of Lord
Stanniscourt’s.”
“Same man,” said Van Tuyl, with a glint of admiration in his tone. “He
was a capital polo player, and--yes, by Jove, a rattling good fellow in
every way. It was a surprise to everyone when he went wrong.” He had
been watching his daughter with no little anxiety. Now her colour was
returning and her hands were in her lap.
“Yes, to everyone,” Mrs. Dickie volunteered, “the whole thing was
simply astounding. He had a good business, hadn’t he? What do you
suppose he wanted with that money?”
“Nobody was ever able to conjecture,” answered Frothingham, as he
helped himself to some _caneton_.
“And he is really here in Paris?” queried Edson, twirling the long stem
of a fragile wineglass between thumb and finger. “Where is he stopping?”
Hope Van Tuyl unconsciously leaned forward to catch the address.
“I don’t know. I never thought to inquire.”
From the violins of the tziganes glided the languorous strains of
the “Valse Bleue,” and instantly all other sounds dwindled. Even
the clatter of knives and forks seemed gradually to cease and the
babble of tongues was vague and far away. Into the girl’s dark eyes
came an expression of melancholy, and the corners of her red-lipped
mouth drooped. The leaves of her calendar had been fluttered back
a twelvemonth by the melody, and she was out under the stars with
the cool breeze from the Hudson fanning her flushed cheeks. Through
the open French windows of the clubhouse at her back the music was
floating. Beside her, his arm girdling her waist, was the man to whom
she had just promised her love and loyalty--the man whose name she
would be proud to wear through all her days--Carey Grey. The ineffable
joy, the blissful content of the moment were, in some mystic manner,
reborn by the chords that sang and swelled and vibrated and whispered,
and yet over all, mingling with the delicious, intoxicating happiness
of this reincarnated experience, was an overpowering sense of
loss--dire, monstrous, crushing.
“Hope, dear,”--it was her father’s voice that brought her back to the
present. His anxious eyes had still been upon her. “Drink your wine,
girl; you aren’t ill, are you? Mr. Edson has been speaking to you and I
don’t believe you’ve heard a word.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Edson,” she ejaculated, recovering herself.
“I fear for the moment I was very far off. Would you mind repeating
what you said?”
“I was proposing a coaching party to Versailles for Saturday, and as
everybody seemed to approve I took the opportunity to ask you if you
would do me the honour of occupying the box seat.”
“With pleasure,” she accepted, smiling bravely, though a dull, leaden
pain was gripping her heart; “I think it will be simply lovely.”
The sextet had come to the restaurant crowded into Mr. Edson’s big
touring car, and when at length the dinner was finished and the men had
smoked their cigars and the moon had come up from behind the trees and
floated like a silver boat in the deep blue sea of the heavens, they
took their places again and went spinning at frantic speed out into the
Allée de Longchamp. A quick turn to the left and in another instant
the Porte Dauphine had been passed and the machine was flying smoothly
down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne with the Arc de Triomphe rising
massively white in the moonlight ahead.
Frothingham found himself brought very close to Hope Van Tuyl by the
exigencies of the arrangement of six goodly sized persons in a space
designed for five; and he was glad that it was so. He had seen much
of her during the winter season in New York, and he had come abroad
chiefly because he knew that she and her father had planned to spend
the early summer in Europe. She was the type of woman he admired. She
was tall and athletic, fond of sports and clever at them, but not so
much of an enthusiast as to be open to the charge of having unsexed
herself. She was, indeed, intensely feminine. Though she could handle a
coach and four as dexterously as the average masculine whip and could
drive a golf ball well on to two hundred yards, her hands were as
delicately white and her fingers as long and taper as those of a girl
whose most strenuous exertion was the execution of a Chopin nocturne.
Her hair was dark, almost black, with glinting bronze reflections in
the sunlight. Her eyes were the brown of chestnuts and her eyebrows
black and perfectly arched. Frothingham had dreamed night after night
of her mouth--it was so red and so tenderly curved, and her lips seemed
always moist.
He had noticed her preoccupation towards the close of the dinner, and
he had marvelled as to the cause. It was such an unusual mood for
her. Now, as they were sweeping with exhilarating speed down the long
avenue, with its double row of glittering lights that flashed by in
streaks--while all the rest were laughing, shouting, shrieking in the
exuberance of the moment--she was still abstracted, silent.
Frothingham ventured to place a hand over one of hers, but she drew
her own away instantly, as though the contact were painful. He fancied
then that he had perhaps unwittingly offended her in some way, and he
whispered, close to her ear:
“I hope you are not annoyed at me. Have I been guilty of any
discourtesy? I am sure I----”
But it was very evident she was not listening, and he broke off in the
middle of the sentence.
The Van Tuyls were stopping at the Ritz, and there Edson put them down.
Frothingham, who had taken lodgings not far away, alighted too, and
Nicholas Van Tuyl asked him in.
“I feel like a brandy and soda,” he said, “and I want company.”
Hope excused herself and went directly to her room. She was very
nervous and very _distraite_. The story that Carey Grey was not
only alive and in Paris, but had been ill, delirious and therefore
unaccountable, disquieted and distressed her. She had loved him more
than she knew until his crime and his flight, and, above all, his
desertion without a word of explanation, revealed to her the fulness of
her passion. Then she had battled with herself for a time; had grown
philosophic and had reasoned, and eventually had gathered together the
pages of her life that bore his name, had torn them out and, as she
believed, destroyed them utterly. And now they were here before her,
suddenly restored as a magician makes whole again the articles that he
tears into bits before his auditors’ eyes.
As she entered her room her maid, who had been reading near a window,
arose, took up something from her dressing-table and came toward her
with it in her outstretched hand.
“A telegram for m’amselle,” she said. She was a very pretty French
maid, and she had a very delicious French accent. She preferred to
speak in English, though Miss Van Tuyl invariably answered her in
French. “It came not ten minutes ago, m’amselle.”
Hope walked listlessly to where an electric lamp glowed under a Dresden
shade, tearing open the envelope as she went. Unfolding the inclosure,
she held it in the light’s glare; and then the little blue sheet
dropped from her nerveless fingers, and she reeled. Had it not been for
Marcelle she might have fallen; but the girl, burning with curiosity
to learn the contents of the telegram--or cablegram, as it proved--had
followed her mistress’s every movement, and now her arm was about her
waist.
“Oh, m’amselle, m’amselle,” she cried in alarm; “my poor m’amselle! Is
it that you hear the bad news?”
But Miss Van Tuyl made no reply. Recovering herself, she crossed the
room and sat down in the chair by the window that Marcelle had just
vacated. The girl stood for a moment irresolute. Then she stooped and
picked up the sheet of blue paper, placing it on the table under the
lamp. As she did so her quick eye took in enough to satisfy her as to
its import. It was from Miss Van Tuyl’s brother in New York, and it
repeated a cable just received. The words made a very deep impression
on Marcelle because of one of them, of which, though it was quite as
much French as it was English, she did not know the meaning.
“That he is here in Paris I can understand; and that he is alive and
well, oh, yes!” she iterated and reiterated to herself; “but what is it
he means by ‘_in-ex-pleek-able_’? ‘Conditions _in-ex-pleek-able_’? Oh,
I fear, I fear, that is something very terrible.”