“One thing, at least, these recent adventures should teach whoever may
be responsible for the government of this country,” Bellamy remarked to
his wife, as he laid down the morning paper. “For the first time in
many years we have taken the aggressive against Powers of equal
standing. We were always rather good at bullying smaller countries, but
the bare idea of an ultimatum to Germany would have made our late
Premier go lightheaded.”
“And yet it succeeded,” Louise reminded him.
“Absolutely,” he affirmed. “To-day’s news makes peace a certainty. If
your country knew everything, Louise, they’d give us a royal welcome
next month.”
“You really mean that we are to go there, then?” she asked.
“It isn’t exactly one of my privileges,” he declared, “to fix upon the
spot where we shall take our belated honeymoon, but I haven’t been in
Belgrade for years, and I know you’d like to see your people.”
“It will be more happiness than I ever dreamed of,” she murmured. “Do
you think we shall be safe in passing through Vienna?”
Bellamy laughed.
“Remember,” he said, “that I am no longer David Bellamy, with a silver
greyhound attached to my watch-chain and an obnoxious reputation in
foreign countries. I am Lord Denchester of Denchester, a harmless
English peer traveling on his honeymoon. By the way, I hope you like
the title.”
“I shall love it when I get used to it,” she declared. “To be an
English Countess is dazzling, but I do think that I ought not to go on
singing at Covent Garden.”
“To-morrow will be your last night,” he reminded her. “I have asked
Laverick and the dear little girl he is going to marry to come with me.
Afterwards we must all have supper together.”
“How nice of you!” she exclaimed.
“I don’t know about that,” Bellamy said, smiling. “I really like
Laverick. He is a decent fellow and a good sort. Incidentally, he was
thundering useful to us, and pretty plucky about it. He interests me,
too, in another way. He is a man who, face to face with a moral
problem, acted exactly as I should have done myself!”
“You mean about the twenty thousand pounds?” she asked.
Bellamy assented.
“He was practically dishonest,” he pointed out. “He had no right to use
that money and he ought to have taken the pocket-book to the
police-station. If he had done so—that is to say, if he had waited
there for the police, if he had been seen to hold out that pocket-book,
to have discussed it with any one, it is ten to one that there would
have been another tragedy that night. At any rate, the document would
never have come to us.”
She smiled.
“My moral judgment is warped,” she asserted, “from the fact that
Laverick’s decision brought us the document.”
He nodded.
“Perhaps so,” he agreed, “and yet, there was the man face to face with
ruin. The use of that money for a few hours did no one any harm, and
saved him. I say that such a deed is always a matter of calculation,
and in this case that he was justified.”
“I wonder what he really thinks about it himself,” she remarked.
“Perhaps I’ll ask him.”
But when the time came, and he sat in the box with Laverick and Zoe, he
forgot everything else in the joy of watching the woman whom he had
loved so long. She moved about the stage that night as though her feet
indeed fell upon the air. She appeared to be singing always with
restraint, yet with some new power in her voice, a quality which even
in her simpler notes left the great audience thrilled. Already there
was a rumor that it was her last appearance. Her marriage to Bellamy
had been that day announced in the _Morning Post_. When, in the last
act, she sang alone on the stage the famous love song, it seemed to
them all that although her voice trembled more than once, it was a new
thing to which they listened. Zoe found herself clasping Laverick’s
hand in tremulous excitement. Bellamy sat like a statue, a little back
in the box, his clean-cut face thrown into powerful relief by the
shadows beyond. Yet, as he listened, his eyes, too, were marvelously
soft. The song grew and grew till, with the last notes, the whole story
of an exquisite and expectant passion seemed trembling in her voice.
The last note came from her lips almost as though unwillingly, and was
prolonged for an extraordinary period. When it died away, its passing
seemed something almost unrealizable. It quivered away into a silence
which lasted for many seconds before the gathering roar of applause
swept the house. And in those last few seconds she had turned and faced
Bellamy. Their eyes met, and the light which flashed from his seemed
answered by the quivering of her throat. It was her good-bye. She was
singing a new love-song, singing her way into the life of the man whom
she loved, singing her way into love itself. Once more the great house,
packed to the ceiling, was worked up to a state of frenzied excitement.
Bellamy was recognized, and the significance of her song sent a wave of
sentiment through the house whose only possible form of expression took
to itself shape in the frantic greetings which called her to the front
again and again. But the three in the box were silent. Bellamy stood
back in the shadows. Laverick and Zoe seemed suddenly to become
immersed in themselves. Bellamy threw open the door of the box and
pointed outside.
“At Luigi’s in half-an-hour,” said he softly. “You will excuse me for a
few minutes? I am going to Louise.”