Kitabı oku: «A Modern Mercenary», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XIII
LOVE IN TWO SHADES

All the next morning the snow fell persistently, and Sagan might have been, as far as appearances went, a castle built in the air. Above, below, around, the snow eddied like a fairy torrent, beating against the solid walls and curling in curious ringed swirls about its buttresses as water beats about a rock in midstream.

But the dominant grey of the outside world cast no appreciable reflection on the spirits of Madame de Sagan's guests, with whom gaiety and wild devices for killing time were necessary and familiar things.

But to Valerie the same suggestion of fear and unrest that had oppressed her on the previous evening still held its silent sway over the place. She stood at the broad window of the main staircase watching the swift atoms of snow drift past, each one by itself a mere melting point, but, in their millions, mighty. She shivered and looked round with an odd sense of apprehension, as if the vague blind storm outside had its counterpart in a vague blind danger within.

A tall man came leaping up the staircase. He stopped beside her. She looked up at him, her deep eyes were full of some disturbing thought.

'Captain Rallywood, will you tell Major Counsellor from me,' she began at once, in a low, hurried voice, 'that, in spite of what he has heard of me, he must still believe Maäsau is the dearest thing on earth to me. Tell him that, if needful, I am ready to prove it with my life! He may make quite sure I meant all I said to him yesterday.'

Rallywood stood silent. The passion of her voice and speech echoed in her own ears and suddenly seemed all excessive and uncalled for; a blush – half anger, half shame – rushed over her face, bringing tears to her eyes. Why was it decreed that she should always, in some small foolish way, appear to disadvantage before this wretched Englishman.

'I will tell him,' said Rallywood at last, 'though I cannot understand.'

'No, you cannot understand! You are so cold, so self-centred that the feelings and tumults which trouble most of us appear as weaknesses to you. Since you cannot understand us, you should not judge us, we others, who, in our own spasmodic way, love our country as you serve yours – steadily and with a whole heart.'

Now, John Rallywood was perplexed. He longed to set himself right with her. Her very accusations, her readiness to find fault, which might have made matters clear to some men, only disheartened him with a renewed sense of her dislike.

'You hate my nation,' he said, after a pause of consideration, 'therefore you condemn me, not because of anything I have done, but on general grounds, putting the worst construction on – on everything. I wonder why you judge me so hardly?'

Valerie laughed, her red lip finely edged with scorn.

'On the contrary, you judge us! Who made you a judge over us? You regard us – you English – with that straight steady look. I suppose you feel what futile creatures we others are, with our shifting moods and passions, our little furies and desperations! Do you remember the night you joined the Guard – the night in the Cloister of St. Anthony? How I trembled and feared for you, I' – she laughed again – 'I even wanted to help you! How absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish – one of those unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt to indulge!'

'Stop!' Rallywood cut her short with a peremptory word, 'I will not allow you to say such things of yourself nor – of me!'

Valerie threw back her head with the slight haughty lift he knew so well.

'You are rather too certain of your own power,' she said.

'You say you remember that night? – not so well as I do? You think I am very sure of myself. And yet I have been mistaken on points that touch me close. I thought that night when I knew I might never see the morning – I dared to fancy that we – you and I – understood each other – a little.' He waited, but Valerie had turned away; her profile looked exquisite, but cold, against the dark shutter as she watched the driving snow. 'So I was the fool after all, you see!' he ended lamely.

According to the immemorial fashion of love, they understood and misunderstood each other alternately playing high and low at every other moment upon the wide gamut of feeling, touching faint sweet notes that would echo for ever.

Rallywood's self-control was giving way a little, and she instinctively felt her power and used it.

'I wonder what you really think of us behind that quiet alertness of yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I – understood you a little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of course you are certain that all unfair opinions of you must come right in the end.'

But Rallywood passed over her many sentences to seize the central idea that appealed to him.

'Yes, I have learned to wait. I told you that everything comes to him who waits. Unfortunately a proverb is true often, not always. One thing can never come to me however long I wait. For me there is no hope.'

'I don't know what you hope for,' replied the girl, slowly, as if she were choosing her words; but she hardly knew what she said, she was lost in a multitude of dreams, and her words but filled in the rare crevices between them. 'I thought that every man carried his own fate in his own hand.'

'A man can fight the tangible, but no man can struggle against the ordinary laws of social life. We may laugh at conventional methods, but even in Révonde there are some which must be yielded to.'

'I don't think,' said Valerie, 'we yield to many in Révonde.'

Rallywood saw a group of people advancing towards them. Valerie, with her changes of mood and manner, distracted him, and drove him on to say what he had resolved never to be tempted into saying.

'I am a soldier – only a soldier; I gain a livelihood, but no more. I have no luck and no genius. To make a fortune or a name is beyond me. And without fortune many desirable things are impossible.'

Valerie turned upon him a bewildering smile.

'I shall know for the future, Captain Rallywood, what you are thinking of. You will be thinking, for all those grave eyes of yours, of the fortune you cannot make!'

'Not quite that, Mademoiselle,' he answered, 'I shall be thinking of the girl I cannot win.'

Valerie found herself drawn away from him by the passing group. She was aware of a warm throb at her heart, she was trembling a little, and the fear of the morning had temporarily vanished. For no definite reason which she could afterwards discover, she felt suddenly happy.

By evening the tsa had blown away the snow-clouds for the time, and a thin moon gleamed fitfully over the wide expanses of white. Remote, muffled in leagues of snow, and alive with hungry passions and unscrupulous strength, the Castle of Sagan did not, on that wild January night, offer desirable housing to the Grand Duke of Maäsau. He had yet some thirty hours to spend as his cousin's guest before he could return to his capital without showing suspicion or giving offence. A hundred times he wished himself back in his great palace by the river bank where the squadrons of the Guard lay within call. But he bore himself well notwithstanding, and although, on the plea of chill and fatigue, he kept to his rooms more than usual, his short appearances in public left in one sense nothing to be desired. He did not carry himself as a man in mortal anxiety, but was as dissatisfied, as discourteous, and as disagreeable as it was his custom to be.

Late in the afternoon Madame de Sagan retired to take some rest before dinner. Wrapped in lace and silk, she was standing in front of her mirror with her women about her, when the Count entered. At his first imperious word the attendants vanished.

Isolde continued to stare into the glass like one fascinated, for in it she not only saw the reflection of her own slender white-clad figure, but over her shoulder the fierce face she dreaded.

For a long minute husband and wife remained reading each other's faces in the looking-glass.

She had seen aversion and menace in the Count's lowering face many a time before, and was at length beginning to believe the almost impossible fact to be true, that a man lived who hated her, over whom her beauty had no power.

The young Countess shivered in mortal terror.

'Simon,' she wailed suddenly, 'you are changed, – you do not love me any more!'

A broad smile flitted across the savage old face.

'You are a fool, but a very pretty fool, Isolde, and for that a man might forgive you many things. Now listen to me. After you retire to your rooms for the night, keep close to them, no matter what you hear. There may be a disturbance, and you had better have Selpdorf's daughter to keep you company.' His expression changed as he spoke of Valerie.

'There is danger,' she gasped, 'danger. What is it, oh, tell me what it is!' Her first fear leaping towards Rallywood.

He stared into her shrinking eyes.

'If you ever hope to be Duchess of Maäsau,' he answered significantly, 'leave Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman, to take care of themselves. Keep your tongue silent! Remember!' He caught her slender wrist roughly as he spoke and pressed it to enforce the command.

The Countess made no reply, but her fingers closed in upon her palms.

'Come, give me a kiss, and promise me to do so much towards making yourself a Grand Duchess.' He brushed her lips carelessly with his moustache.

The caress brought no response; but as he bent over her she whispered, 'Have mercy on me Simon!' (it was a prayer born rather of some vague instinct of danger than any defined fear); 'don't kill me!'

He put his thick arm round her and shook her impatiently.

'Kill you, Isolde? Are you mad? You are far more useful to me living than dead. Get rid of your silly fears, and remember – silence!'

Then putting her back on the couch with more gentleness than might have been expected of him, he walked out of the room. For a little while she sat listening, then opened her eyes and glanced about her. Yes, he was gone. But it was characteristic of her that at such a time her chief and overpowering thought was Valerie as a rival! 'Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman!' A score of trifles rushed back upon her memory; but no it could not be. It was one of the Count's amiable ways to suggest causes of jealousy to his wife. He meant nothing, for what could he know? The soothing conviction grew upon her that the taunt was thrown at her for what it was worth. Oh, how she hated Sagan – hated his bloodshot, beast's eyes, his mocking laugh, his cruel hands, his crueller gibes!

She pushed back the lace from her wrist and saw the thin parallels of bruised flesh his fingers had left – entirely unaware, it must be owned – upon her whiteness. Ah, she would show these to Rallywood – as a proof that she was in danger, that she actually needed his protection, and so win him from his post, which to-night would become the post of death.

All her little vain soul thrilled within her at the possibility of triumph – of defeating the honour of such a man – of winning him from his watch for love's sake – of overcoming the scruples that had for so long a time stood out against her wiles.

And yet in her poor way she loved him – loved him as she would probably never love another. Some women are made in that way, they take pride in the loftiness of the height from which they drag men down. Then he must be saved, she told herself, at all costs saved! He would live to thank her yet. A thought of him lying dead in his blood by the dark embrasure that masked the entrance to the royal apartments flashed across her mind. She stretched out her arms with a soft call like a bird's.

'Oh, love, love, I will save you!'

CHAPTER XIV
HALF A PROMISE

Ten minutes later a big emblazoned footman brought Rallywood a summons from the Countess, as he stood talking to Counsellor and the Russian attaché.

As he moved away Blivinski placed a bony impressive finger on Counsellor's sleeve.

'If he were not English, you could not trust him,' he said enigmatically.

Counsellor raised his bushy eyebrows, with a humorous glance. 'We have had our day.'

'Ah, my friend, you know most things. Also I know a very few,' Blivinski said significantly, 'but with your nation patriotism is not a virtue, it is a part of your physical system. You sacrifice all for your country, not because it is right to do so, but simply because you cannot help it; the good God made you so. Therefore this young man, in face of the supreme temptation of youth, may be trusted. I speak of these things now because you will remember, in good time, that those who are against you will not dare to injure' – he removed the finger to his own breast – 'us also!'

And the little silent swarthy man slipped away almost before Counsellor realised that Russia, the mighty, had given him a pledge which might prove of immense value in the uncertain future.

Rallywood found the young Countess crouching and shivering near a wood fire. She was magnificently dressed in rich tones of royal purple, that accentuated her delicate fairness and beauty, and a small diadem of amethysts shone in the pale gold of her hair.

She took no notice of his entrance, though she was acutely conscious that his eyes were on her. She was hungry of his gaze, and she believed in the power of her own loveliness.

'Jack,' she said at last, 'come here. I wonder now why I sent for you, but I am miserable.'

She looked up at him heavy-lidded.

There was concern in his voice as he answered her.

'If I told you all,' she went on, 'you would not believe me. I am now – to-night – in great danger.'

'In danger? Here? where you are surrounded by friends,' replied Rallywood, beginning to wish himself well out of it. Had there been no Valerie Selpdorf, or even had he not uttered those impulsive words which, to his mind, changed his position from the indefinite to the definite, the history of his life might have been turned into another channel that evening. As it was, though Valerie remained free as the wind, he felt himself to be in some vague manner bound to her.

'Nonsense! You know how useless all these friends would be if things went wrong with me. They flatter the Countess of Sagan, but not one of them would make the smallest sacrifice for Isolde, the woman. I do not know if you, even you, are my friend. We talked about it – long ago. But I have not put you to the test, and I – I often wonder if our friendship still remains alive.'

'I am as I always was,' he parried.

'I wonder if that is true?' She raised her drooping face again. 'I don't know how to believe you. Why will you keep up this pretence of – of reserve between us? You never tell me your troubles, and I suppose you have them, like the rest of us. We should be quite old friends now, and yet you are always so' – she hesitated for a word – 'courteous. Are you ever angry, for example?'

'Very often.'

'But not with me, and I have given you cause many a time. If you would be angry with me even once, Jack, causelessly angry, then I should know I had a friend to whom I could go if I were in trouble – in such trouble as I am to-night!'

'If there is anything I can do for you – '

The quiet tone annoyed her. She rose quickly.

'If – if – if! Any man could help me who – cared.'

'I do care.'

'I wonder,' she said wistfully, 'how much you mean of what you say. I have no standard to judge you by, because you are not quite like other men. But I owe you my life, and I sometimes think it gives me a claim on you.'

'I can never pretend you owe me anything: you were quite safe; no accident could have happened. You are far too good a horsewoman, though you were nervous for the moment.' He spoke with a careless affectionateness, for the young Countess in her helpless beauty appealed to him.

'Look at me!' she said tragically. 'Do I seem hateful?'

'You are a young queen,' he paused, and added, 'a young queen – seen in a dream! You are too ethereal to be of common earth.'

'I am of common earth like any other woman,' she answered with a forlorn little smile; 'I can be afraid and – I can love!'

'Afraid? In your own Castle, among your own people?'

'Yes, Jack. Don't think I am silly! It is quite true. You say you have not changed, that you are still my friend. You are my only one then! I must look to you for protection; I have no one else in the whole world.' She was very near him, her little cold hand had caught his in her vehemence; she looked apprehensively behind her, and then spoke low in his ear. 'I am afraid of my husband. He wishes to be rid of me – I have seen it in his eyes. Sagan will kill me! Do you remember the night of the ball, when I gave you the firefly? Have you kept it, I wonder? I said mine would be a short life. It is true. Sagan is tired of me, and I – Jack, I – loathe him!'

'But – ' Rallywood began.

'You don't believe me? See this!' she pushed back a band of black velvet from her arm, and held it out to him. This touched him more than all; the slender blue-veined wrist with the marks of those cruel fingers clasped about it moved him far more than the temptations of her delicate beauty. With an almost involuntary desire to comfort her as one might comfort and please a child, he bent above her hand and kissed the bruises.

Isolde clung to him with a quick sob of relief.

'Promise me, Jack, that you will save me! When danger threatens me I will send for you. You will come? You promise?'

But Rallywood was not in the least in love with Madame de Sagan for all his pity. He was again master of himself, and an odd suspicion flashed across him.

'I feel certain you are mistaken,' he repeated; 'but you have another friend who can be of more service than I just now, Mademoiselle Selpdorf.'

The Countess sank back into her chair.

'What do you know of Valerie?' she asked coldly.

'Very little, but – '

'Thanks! I know her better than you do. I don't choose that she should amuse herself at my expense.

As it is, she has brought most of this trouble upon me.'

Rallywood may have been sagacious enough on some points, but on this particular one he was a fool. He was not at all aware that Madame de Sagan with her innocent eyes and small brain was sifting him.

'But she meant to defend you!' he exclaimed.

She laughed softly, and if a woman could have compassed the ruin of a man by means of love and temptation, Rallywood was lost from that hour, for the rivalry of Valerie Selpdorf added the one incentive of bitter resolve that drives such slight-brained jealous souls to the last limit of reckless endeavour.

'When I find myself in danger I will remind you of the firefly, and you will come then, Jack!' she said, 'you promise?'

'When you want me, I will come – as soon as I may.'

'But that is only half a promise.'

'Yes,' he replied, 'but you know the other half is pledged already.'

She sprang up with clenched hands.

'What? To Valerie? Already?'

'No, Madame, to the Duke.'

'Ah, the Duke is well served!' she said sadly as he bowed at the door, but she laughed to herself when it closed behind him, 'Yet you will come when I send for you, Jack!'

CHAPTER XV
COLENDORP

As the night deepened the wind again rose, its many voices howled about the Castle and compelled the ear to listen. It volleyed yelling through the ravines, it roared among the lean pine-trees like the surf on an open coast, it swept round the Castle walls in long-drawn infuriated screaming that seemed charged with echoes of wild pain and remoteness and fear. The narrow moon had long since sunk behind the rack of storm-driven clouds, and left the mountains steeped in a tumultuous milk-coloured darkness of snow and wind.

Within the massive walls the reception rooms were closed and empty at last; the guests had separated and night had taken possession, but not rest.

Valerie, alone in her room and oppressed by the vague infection of wakefulness and fear, moved from window to window listening to the wild noises that were abroad, and trying to reason herself out of the conviction of coming danger, which held her from sleep.

She had thrown back the curtains from the windows. Her room occupied an exposed corner of the Castle tower, which stood on the edge of the gorge through which the Kofn chafed its way to the plains below the Ford. A narrow strip of ground scarcely six feet in width alone separated the wall of the tower from the precipice that fell sheer away to the foaming water far below.

She tried to read but could not fix her attention. Her heart seemed in her ears and answered to every sound.

And all the while in the scattered rooms and shadowy passages the drama which involved her life was being slowly played out. Below on the ground floor of the tower Elmur and Sagan sat together.

'By the way, my dear Count, have you ever thought of the possibility of Captain Colendorp's refusal to see things in our light?' Elmur was asking, after an interval filled in by the noises of wind and water which could not be shut out of the Castle on such a night.

The Count looked up and scowled.

'Leave the management of the affair to me,' he said. 'Unless I were sure of my man, I should not be such a fool as to bring him here to listen to what I shall say to him to-night;' then he added as an afterthought, 'When once we have begun, Baron von Elmur, there can be no going back. Remember that! The game must now be played to the end, whatever that end is.'

Elmur pondered. Sagan was a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost the whip-hand of Count Simon.

Up to this interview, by alternate effrontery and flattery, he had kept his place in the Count's confidence, and exerted a guiding and restraining influence over him. Now Sagan held him at arm's length, and was plainly determined to act according to his own judgment without consulting the German. The mischief had, of course, been done by the news of Elmur's engagement to Selpdorf's daughter, for Sagan, like others of his limited mental development, was sensitively suspicious. Hence the bond between the two men was weak, inasmuch as neither liked nor trusted the other, but it was strong, since both were tenacious and both had staked all the future on the chance of forcing a new régime upon Maäsau the Free. At this crisis, however, Elmur would gladly have hedged or masked his position, for he knew himself to be overmuch at the mercy of the equivocal tact and discretion of his ungovernable coadjutor.

'I cannot help thinking that my presence at the outset will make Captain Colendorp shy at any proposition whatever,' said Elmur again.

'Do you want to draw back? You don't wish to appear in the matter – is that it? By St. Anthony, von Elmur, you showed me the road that has brought me to this pass and you will have to stand by me now! Also you are wrong about Colendorp. When he sees for himself that I have Germany behind me, it will decide his doubts – if he has any, which I don't expect. I have read the man. He is soured and ill-conditioned, the readiest stuff to make a rebel and a traitor of!'

What more Elmur might have urged was cut short by the entrance of Colendorp. He had left his sword outside.

He saluted Sagan in his stiff punctilious way, his dark and sallow face impenetrable.

'I am glad to see you, Captain Colendorp,' said Sagan with some constraint. Even he felt the check of the man's iron impassiveness.

'You sent for me, my lord,' returned Colendorp, as one who hints that time is short and he would be through with business.

'Take a cigar,' said the Count, pushing a box across the table, and also pouring out a generous glass of the liqueur, for the manufacture of which Maäsau is famous – the golden glittering poison known as bizutte.

Colendorp accepted both in silence, but took a seat with a certain slow unwillingness that was suggestive. Colendorp was at the best unpliable. His manner put an edge on Sagan's temper. He plunged into his subject.

'Yes, I sent for you, Captain Colendorp, because I believe you to be a faithful Maäsaun. You are not one of those blind optimists who say because Maäsau has been swinging so long between ruin and extravagance that she must swing on so for ever. It is not possible!'

'I am sorry to hear that, my lord.'

'No, I say it is not possible. Changes must be made. In these days of big armaments and growing kingdoms, Maäsau can no longer stand alone. She must secure an ally, a friend powerful enough to back her up against all comers – a great nation who will make the cause of Maäsau's freedom her own, and help us to preserve the traditions of our country.'

Elmur half expected the soldier to point this speech for himself by a glance towards the representative of Germany, but Colendorp sat unresponsive and black-browed, and gave no sign.

'There is a party among us who advise us to wait until we are forced into a corner, and then to make choice of such an ally. But reasonable men know that a bargain one is driven to make must inevitably be a bad bargain. The only hope for Maäsau is to move at once and to move boldly before it is too late, and while we are still in a position to choose for ourselves under the conditions which suit us best and will best conduce to the preservation of our freedom.'

Colendorp listened without any change of expression.

'What is your opinion, Captain Colendorp?' asked Sagan at last.

'The only difficulty would be to find a nation sufficiently disinterested for our purpose, my lord,' replied Colendorp deliberately.

'I have found one.' Sagan indicated Elmur, but the Guardsman still kept his gaze on the Count. 'Only one small obstacle stands in the way of carrying out our plans – the plans, recollect, of the wisest and most patriotic of our countrymen. I need not name it.'

Colendorp apparently thought for a moment.

'M. Selpdorf?' he said.

'But not at all! Selpdorf is one of the foremost of my advisers.'

Colendorp shook his head as if no other name occurred to him; Sagan bent across the table, the knotted hand on which he leaned twitching slightly.

'You do not speak, but you know the truth. And you know the – the Duke.'

Colendorp's silence was telling on Sagan's self-control.

'Yes, the Duke!' he reiterated. 'He has never given a thought to the welfare of Maäsau. Its revenues are his necessity, that is all! If the ruler will not take the interests of the country into consideration, his people must supply his place. Do not misunderstand my words!' for at length a blacker frown passed over the iron face of the listener. 'My meaning is not to hurt the Duke at all; our one wish is to urge upon him the only course left for the safety of the country. To that end we must all combine. So long as his Highness believes he can depend on his Guard to back him, he will hold out against even the most reasonable demands. Therefore the Guard must be with us.'

'I am not the colonel of the Guard,' said Colendorp quietly. Sagan took this in some form as an agreement with his views, some surrender on the part of the Guardsman, and he broke out into a flood of speech.

'No, but Wallenloup! A pig-headed old fool, who would never be brought to see an inch either side of his oath of allegiance, but would rush blindly on before the Duke to his death, and to the destruction of Maäsau – to anywhere! Colendorp, Ulm being away, you are the senior officer, failing Wallenloup. It is not outside the possibilities of the game that you would find yourself in command of the Guard when all was said and done. The highest ambition of a Maäsaun is yours if you will promise us your help in this struggle! A struggle, mind you, not of selfish motives nor for self-aggrandisement, but for Maäsau the Free!' He stuttered in his eagerness and then stood waiting for the reply.

'And if the Duke does not consent to – any – changes?' asked Colendorp coldly.

At this juncture Elmur interposed.

'The Count will ex – '

But Sagan was rushing his fences now like a vicious horse. Having once given voice to his ambitions he had no longer the power to rein in his speech.

'By your leave, Baron von Elmur, I will speak! Colendorp, you are a man to whom the world may yet give much. Your one chance is being offered to you – here – to-night. The men will follow you if you give the word, and Wallenloup, well, Wallenloup must upon that occasion absent himself. Use your influence with the other officers. They are not to be bribed, of course, but in the cause of the country each man would find his services well rewarded. Think before you answer me, man! Duke Gustave is sunk in pleasure and has sold the country over and over again to the highest bidder, and only got out of his share of the bargain by Selpdorf's infernal cleverness. This time we will play an open game. With Germany to stand by us, we have nothing to fear!'

'And if His Highness will not consent to these changes?' again demanded Colendorp.

'Then' – Elmur laid a hand on the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off – 'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go – to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.'

Colendorp's dark eyes glared straight in front of him. Had it been Adiron – Adiron, as true a man, would have feigned agreement and blown the plot afterwards. But never Colendorp! He was narrow-minded, poor, embittered, scenting insult in every careless word, proud, loyal, desperate. Mentally his vision was limited; he could see but one thing at a time, but he saw it very large.

Sagan's treachery passed by him in that moment of mad feeling. He felt and felt only the deadly affront offered to him of all the officers of the Guard – the coarse bribe of the colonelcy dangled before his starving nose, for he alone of all the Guard had been deemed corruptible! The thought held more than the bitterness of death.