Nearly a year had passed since General Ducros had dined with Count
Valdemar and Ma'm'selle Sophie in Paris. It was Cowes week, and there
was quite a cosmopolitan party at Orrel Court. Adelaide de Conde and
Madame de Bourbon were the best of friends with Count Valdemar and
Sophie. Clifford Vandel and Miss Chrysie were good friends with
everybody, the latter especially good friends with Hardress, whose
work was now rapidly approaching completion. In short, it was as
charming a cosmopolitan party as you could have found on the Hampshire
shore, or anywhere else; and none of the other guests of Lord Orrel,
and there were several of them not unskilled in diplomacy, ever dreamt
that under the surface of the smooth-flowing conversation, whether
round the dinner-table at the Court, on the _Nadine_, which ran down
the Southampton Water every day that there was a good race on, or at
Clifford Vandel's bungalow at Cowes, whose smoothly shaven lawn sloped
down almost to the water's edge, lay undercurrents of plot and
counterplot, the issue of which was the question whether the dominion
of the world was to be committed to Anglo-Saxon or Franco-Slav hands.
One night--it was the evening after the great regatta--three
conversations took place under the roof of Orrel Court, which the
greatest newspapers of the two hemispheres would have given any amount
of money to be able to report, since each of them was possibly
pregnant with the fate of the world.
When Clifford Vandel came up from the smoking-room a little after
eleven he found Miss Chrysie waiting for him in the sitting-room of
the suite of apartments that had been given to them in the eastern
wing of the old mansion.
"Don't you think you ought to be in bed, Chrysie, instead of sitting
there smoking a cigarette, and--Why, what's the matter with you,
girl?"
He had begun with something like a note of reproach in his voice, but
the last words were spoken in a tone of tender concern.
She got up from her chair, went to the door, and shut it and locked
it, and then, with her half-smoked cigarette poised between her
fingers, her face pale, and her eyes aflame, she faced him and said,
in low, quick-flowing tones:
"Poppa, can't you see what's the matter?--you, who can see things
months before they happen, and make millions by gambling on them?--you
who did up Morgan himself over that wireless telegraphy combine--can't
you see what's going on right here just under your nose?"
"My dear Chrysie, what are you talking about? I've not noticed
anything particular happening, except what's happened in the right
way. What's the trouble?"
"The trouble's that Frenchwoman--that second edition of Marie
Antoinette. Can't you see what she's doing every hour and day of her
life? Can't you see that she's as beautiful as an angel, and--well, as
clever as the other thing, and that she's just playing her hand for
all she's worth to get the man I want--the man I half-promised myself
to a year ago!"
"Perhaps I've been too busy about other matters, and perhaps I never
expected anything of the sort," replied her father; "and anyhow, men
are fools at seeing this kind of thing; but if that's so, and you
really do want him, why not promise yourself altogether and fix things
up? There's no man I'd sooner have for a son-in-law; and if you want
him, and he wants you, why----"
"It's just there, poppa, that I'm feeling bad about it," she said,
coming nearer to him, and speaking with a little break in her voice.
"I'm not so sure that he does want me now--at least, not quite as
badly as he did that time when he asked me first in Buffalo. Don't you
see that Frenchwoman's bewitched him? And who could blame him, after
all? What do all the society papers say about her? The most beautiful
woman in Europe--the great-great-grand-daughter of Louis the
Magnificent himself, with the noblest blood of France in her veins!
How could any man with eyes in his head and blood in his heart resist
her? Why, I could no more compare with her than----"
"Than a wild rose in one of these beautiful English lanes could
compare with a special variety of an orchid in a hothouse; and I
guess, Chrysie, that if I haven't made a great mistake about Shafto
Hardress--if he does get a bit intoxicated with the scent of the
orchid, if it comes to winning and wearing the flower, he'll take the
wild rose. If he doesn't--well, I guess you'll do pretty well without
him."
"But I just can't do without him, poppa. You are the only one I'd tell
it to, but that's so; and before that Frenchwoman gets him I'd have
her out and shoot her. Women in her country fight duels. And there's
more to it than that," she went on, after a little pause.
"And what might that be, Miss Fire-eater?" said her father,
half-laughing, half-seriously.
"I believe that she and that Russian girl, who goes languishing around
Shafto when the marquise or myself isn't around, know more than they
should do about this storage scheme. I don't say I've been
listening--I wouldn't do it--no, not even for them; but sometimes you
can't help hearing; and only the day before yesterday, out in the
grounds there, I heard both of them, not to each other, but at
different times to Count Valdemar, mention the name of Victor Fargeau;
and you know who he is--son of the man whose remains Shafto picked up
at sea--creator of this great scheme of yours--a Frenchman who was an
officer in the German army. Now listen: both these women are friends
of General Ducros, the French War Minister. France is sending out the
Polar expedition this year that she has been preparing for months--you
know that; so has Russia. Do you see what I mean now?"
"I guess you've got me on my own ground there, Chrysie," said her
father, laying his hand across her shoulders, and drawing her towards
him. "You were dead right when you said that a woman's intuition can
sometimes see quicker and farther than a man's reason; but on that
kind of ground I guess I can see as well as anyone. I admit that I
have been wondering a bit why just this particular year France and
Russia should be sending two Polar expeditions out; but it's pretty
well sure that if you hadn't seen that this French marquise and the
Russian countess were after the man you want--and the man you're going
to get, too, if he's the man I think he is--I shouldn't have seen what
I see now."
"And what's that, poppa?"
"They're not Polar expeditions at all, Chrysie; those ships are no
more trying to go to the North Pole than they're trying to find the
source of the Amazon. You got the key that opens the whole show when
you heard them talking about Victor Fargeau. They're going to Boothia
Land, that's where they're going to, and they're not going on what the
Russians generally call a voyage of scientific discovery. I'd bet
every dollar we've got in the Trust that those ships have guns on
them, and there's going to be a fight for that Magnetic Pole after
all. Anyhow, there's a cable going across to Doctor Lamson the first
thing to-morrow morning. If there's anything like that going on, he
can't be on guard any too soon. And now, little girl," he went on,
raising his hand and putting it on her head, "you go to bed, and don't
you worry about Frenchwomen or Russians. Shafto Hardress comes of good
old English and American stock, and he's just as clever as he can be
without being altogether American. Don't you worry about him. There's
not going to be any trouble in his mind when he has to choose between
a clean-blooded, healthy American girl and anyone else, even if she
has got all the blood of all the Bourbons in her veins, or even if she
is the daughter of Count Valdemar of Russia, whose ancestors, I guess,
were half savages when yours were gentlemen. Don't you worry about
that, little girl; you just go to bed, and dream about the time when
you'll be sitting on a throne that Marie Antoinette's wasn't a
circumstance to. Now, I have told you, and that's so. Good-night. I'll
have a talk with Lord Orrel to-morrow morning, and see to the business
part of the affair."
As Chrysie crossed the long corridor to her own room she caught a
glimpse of a tall, graceful figure which she had come to know only too
well, and the sweep of a long, trailing skirt, vanishing through a
door which she knew led into Count Valdemar's dressing-room.
"That's Sophie," she said. "I wonder if she saw me. She's been with
the marquise, I suppose; and now she's going to have a talk with her
father, something like mine with poppa. It's mean to listen, and I
couldn't do it if I wanted to, but I'd like to give some of those
dollars that poppa's going to make out of this scheme to hear what
she's going to say, or what she's been saying to the marquise. I
reckon I could make some history out of it if I knew; but anyhow,
there's going to be trouble with that Frenchwoman. I don't think so
much about the Russian. I believe she wants to marry either Lord Orrel
or poppa; she's just about as mean as she is pretty and clever. I'd
just like to say that English swear-word about her."
Miss Chrysie said that, and many other things, in her soul that night
after she had laid her head on her pillow; and, even after the demands
of physical fatigue upon a perfectly healthy physique had compelled
slumber, she dreamt of herself as a modern Juno, usurping the throne
of Jove, and wielding his lightnings, with the especial object of
destroying utterly from the face of the earth two young ladies, with
whom she was living on apparent terms of the most perfect friendship,
and who were even then resting their pretty heads on pillows just like
hers under the same roof.