MAXINE DE RENZIE’S PART
CHAPTER VIII
MAXINE ACTS ON THE STAGE AND OFF
How I got through the play on that awful night, I don’t know.
When I went onto the stage to take up my cue, soon after the beginning of the first act, my brain was a blank. I could not remember a single line that I had to say. I couldn’t even see through the dazzling mist which floated before my eyes, to recognise Raoul in the box where I knew he would be sitting unless—something had happened. But presently I was conscious of one pair of hands clapping more than all the rest. Yes, Raoul was there. I felt his love reaching out to me and warming my chilled heart like a ray of sunshine that finds its way through shadows. I must not fail. For his sake, I must not fail. I never had failed, and I would not now—above all, not now.
It was the thought of Raoul that gave me back my courage; and though I couldn’t have said one word of my part before I came on the stage to answer that first cue, by the time the applause had died down enough to let me speak, each line seemed to spring into my mind as it was needed. Then I got out of myself and into the part, as I always do, but had feared not to do to-night. The audience was mine, to play with as I liked, to make laugh, to make cry, and clap its hands or shout “Brava-brava!”
Yet for once I feared it, feared that great crowd of people out there, as a lion tamer must at some time or other fear one of his lions. “What if they know all I’ve done?” The question flashed across my brain. “What if a voice in the auditorium should suddenly shout that Maxine de Renzie had betrayed France for money, English money?” How these hands which applauded would tingle to seize me by the throat and choke my life out.
Still, with these thoughts murmuring in my head like a kind of dreadful undertone, I went on. An actress can always go on—till she breaks. I think that she can’t be bent, as other women can: and I envy the women who haven’t had to learn the lesson of hardening themselves. It seems to me that they must suffer less.
At last came the end of the first act. But there were five curtain calls. Five times I had to go back and smile, and bow, and look delighted with the ovation I was having. Then, when the time came that I could escape, I met on the way to my dressing-room men carrying big harps and crowns, baskets and bunches of flowers which had been sent up to me on the stage. I pushed past, hardly glancing at them, for I knew that Raoul would be waiting.
There he was, radiant with his unselfish pride in me—my big, handsome lover, looking more like the Apollo Belvedere come alive and dressed in modern clothes than like an ordinary diplomatic young man from the Foreign Office. But then, of course, he is really quite out of place in diplomacy. Since he can’t exist on a marble pedestal or some Old Master’s canvas, he ought at least to be a poet or an artist—and so he is at heart; not one, but both; and a dreamer of beautiful dreams, as beautiful and noble as his own clear-cut face, which might be cold if it were not for the eyes, and lips.
There were people about, and we spoke like mere acquaintances until I’d led Raoul into the little boudoir which adjoins my dressing-room. Then—well, we spoke no longer like mere acquaintances. That is enough to say. And we had five minutes together, before I was obliged to send him away, and go to dress for the second act.
The touch of Raoul’s hands, and those lips of his that are not cold, gave me strength to go through all that was yet to come. There’s something almost magical in the touch—just a little, little touch—of the one we love best. For a moment we can forget everything else, even if it were death itself waiting just round the corner. I’ve flirted with more than one man, sometimes because I liked him and it amused me,—as with Ivor Dundas,—sometimes because I had to win him for politic reasons. But I never knew that blessed feeling until I met Raoul du Laurier. It was a heavenly rest now to lay my head for a minute on his shoulder, just shutting my eyes, without speaking a word.
I thought—for I was worn out, body and soul, with the strain of keeping up and hiding my secret—that when I was dead the best paradise would be to lean so on Raoul’s shoulder, never moving, for the first two or three hundred years of eternity. But as the peaceful fancy cooled my brain, back darted remembrance, like a poisonous snake. I reminded myself how little I deserved such a paradise, and how my lover’s dear arms would put me away, in a kind of unbelieving horror, if he knew what I had done, and how I had betrayed his trust in me.
For ten years I’d been a political spy—yes. But I owed a grudge to Russia, which I’d promised my father to pay: and France is Russia’s ally. Besides, it seems less vile to betray a country than to deceive a man you adore, who adores you in return. We women are true as truth itself to those we love. For them we would sacrifice the greatest cause. Always I had known this, and I had thought that I could prove myself truer than the truest, if I ever loved. Yet now I had betrayed my lover and sold his country; and, realising what I had done, as I hardly had realised it till this moment, I suffered torture in his arms.
Even if, by something like a miracle, we were saved from ruin, nothing on earth could wash the stain from my heart, which Raoul believed so good, so pure.
What can be more terrible for a woman than the secret knowledge that to hold a man’s respect she must always keep one dark spot covered from his eyes? Such a woman needs no future punishment. She has all she deserves in this world. My punishment had begun, and it would always go on through my life with Raoul, I knew, even if no great disaster came. Into the heart of my happiness would come the thought of that hidden spot; how often, oh, how often, would I feel that thought stir like a black bat!
I could no longer rest with my eyes shut, at peace after the storm. I shuddered and sobbed, though my lids were dry, and Raoul tried to soothe me, thinking it was but my excitement in playing for the first time a heavy and exacting part. He little guessed how heavy and exacting it really was!
“Darling,” he said, “you were wonderful. And how proud I was of you—how proud I am. I thought it would be impossible to worship you more than I did. But I love you a thousand times more than ever to-night.”
It was true, I knew. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. Since his dreadful misfortune in losing the diamonds, since I had comforted him for their loss, and insisted on giving him all I had to help him out of his trouble, he had seen in me the angel of his salvation. To-night his heart was almost breaking with love for me, who so ill deserved it. Now, I had news for him, which would make him long to shout for joy. If I chose, I could tell him that the jewels were safe. He would love me still more passionately in his happiness, which I had given, than in his grief; and I would take all his love as if it were my right, hiding the secret of my treachery as long as I could. But how long would that be? How could I be sure that the theft of the treaty had not already been discovered, and that the avalanche of ruin was not on its way to blot us for ever out of life and love?
The fear made me nestle nearer to him, and cling tightly, because I said to myself that perhaps I might never be in his arms again: that this might be the last time that his eyes—those eyes that are not cold—might look at me with love in them, as now.
“Suppose all these people out there had hated and hissed me, instead of applauding?” I asked. “Would you still be proud of me, still care for me?”
“I’d love you better, if there could be a ‘better,’” he answered, holding me very close.
“You know, dearest one, most beautiful one, that I’m a jealous brute. I can’t bear you to belong to others—even to the public that appreciates you almost as much as you deserve to be appreciated. Of course I’m proud that they adore you, but I’d like to take you away from them and adore you all by myself. Why, if the whole world turned against you, there’d be a kind of joy in that for me. I’d be so glad of the chance to face it for you, to shield you from it always.”
“Then, what is there would make you love me less?” I went on, dwelling on the subject with a dreadful fascination, as one looks over the brink of a precipice.
“Nothing on God’s earth—while you kept true to me.”
“And if I weren’t true—if I deceived you?”
“Why, I’d kill you—and myself after. But it makes me see red—a blazing scarlet—even to think of such a thing. Why should you speak of it—when it’s beyond possibility, thank Heaven! I know you love me, or you wouldn’t make such noble sacrifices to save me from ruin.”
I shivered: and I shall not be colder when they lay me in my coffin. I wished that I had not looked over that precipice, down into blackness. Why dwell on horrors, when I might have five minutes of happiness—perhaps the last I should ever know? I remembered the piece of good news I had for Raoul. I would have told him then, but he went on, saying to me so many things sweet and blessed to hear, that I could not bear to cut him short, lest never after this should he speak words of love to me. Then—long before it ought, so it seemed—the clock in mydressing-room struck, and I knew that I hadn’t another instant to spare. On some first nights I might have been willing to risk keeping the curtain down (though I am rather conscientious in such ways), but to-night I wanted, more than anything else, to have the play over, and to get home by midnight or before, so that my suspense might be ended, and I might know the worst—or best.
“I must go. You must leave me, dear,” I said. “But I’ve some good news for you when there’s time to explain, and a great surprise. I can’t give you a minute until the last, for you know I’ve almost to open the third and fourth acts. But when the curtain goes down on my death scene, come behind again. I shan’t take any calls—after dying, it’s too inartistic, isn’t it? And I never do. I’ll see you for just a few more minutes here, in this room, before I dress to go home.”
“For a few minutes!” Raoul caught me up. “But afterwards? You promised me long ago that I should have supper with you at your house—just you and I alone together—on the first night of the new play.”
My heart gave a jump as he reminded me of this promise. Never before had I forgotten an engagement with Raoul. But this time I had forgotten. There had been so many miserable things to think of, that they had crowded the one pleasant thing out of my tortured brain. I drew away from him involuntarily with a start of surprise.
“You’d forgotten!” exclaimed Raoul, disappointed and hurt.
“Only for the instant,” I said, “because I’m hardly myself. I’m tired and excited, unstrung, as I always am on first nights. But—”
“Would you rather not be bothered with me?” he asked wistfully, as I paused to think what I should do.
His eyes looked as if the light had suddenly gone out of them, and I couldn’t bear that. It might too soon be struck out for ever, and by me.
“Don’t say ‘bothered’!” I reproached him. “That’s a cruel word. The question is—I’m worn out. I don’t think I shall be able to eat supper. My maid will want to put me to bed, the minute I get home. Poor old Marianne! She’s such a tyrant, when she fancies it’s for my good. It, generally ends in my obeying her—seldom in her obeying me. But we’ll see how I feel when the last act’s over. We’ll talk of it when you come here—after my death.” I tried to laugh, as I made that wretched jest, but I was sorry when I made it, and my laugh didn’t ring true. There was a shadow on Raoul’s face—that dear, sensitive face of his which shows too much feeling for a man in this work-a-day, strenuous world—but I had little time to comfort him.
“It will be like coming to life again, to see you,” I said. “And now, good-bye! no, not good-bye, but au revoir.”
I sent him away, and flew into my dressing-room next door, where Marianne was growing very nervous, and aimlessly shifting my make-up things on the dressing table, or fussing with some part of my dress for the next act.
“There’s a letter for you, Mademoiselle,” said she. “The stage-door keeper just brought it round. But you haven’t time to read it now.”
A wave of faintness swept over me. Supposing Ivor had had bad news, and thought it best to warn me without delay?
“I must read the letter,” I insisted. “Give it to me at once.”
Occasionally Marianne (who has been with me for many years, and is old enough to be my mother) argues a matter on which we disagree: but something in my voice, I suppose, made her obey me with extraordinary promptness. Then came a shock—and not of relief. I recognised on the envelope the handwriting of Count Godensky.
I know that I am not a coward. Yet it was only by the strongest effort of will that I forced myself to open that letter. I was afraid—afraid of a hundred things. But most of all, I was afraid of learning that the treaty was in his hands. It would be like him to tell me he had it, and try to drive some dreadful bargain.
Nerving myself, as I suppose a condemned criminal must nerve himself to go to the guillotine or the gallows, I opened the letter. For as long as I might have counted “one, two,” slowly, the paper looked black before my eyes, as if ink were spilt over it, blotting out the words: but the dark smudge cleared away, and showed me—nothing, except that, if Alexis Godensky held a trump card, I was not to have a sight of it until later, when he chose.
“MY DEAR MAXINE,” [he began his letter, though he had never been given the right to call me Maxine, and never had dared so to call me before] “I must see you, and talk to you this evening, alone. This for your own sake and that of another, even more than mine, though you know very well what it is to me to be with you. Perhaps you may be able to guess that this is important. I am so sure that you will guess, and that you will not only be willing but anxious to see me to-night, if you never were before, that I shall venture to be waiting for you at the stage door when you come out.
“Yours, in whatever way you will,
“ALEXIS.”
If anything could have given me pleasure at that moment, it would have been to tear the letter in little pieces, with the writer looking on. Then to throw those pieces in his hateful face, and say, “That’s your answer.”
But he was not looking on, and even if he had been I could not have done what I wished. He knew that I would have to consent to see him, that he need have no fear I would profit by my knowledge of his intentions, to order him sent away from the stage door. I would have to see him. But how could I manage it after refusing—as I must refuse—to let Raoul go home with me? Raoul was coming to me after my death scene on the stage. At the very least, he would expect to put me into my carriage when I left the theatre, even if he went no further. Yet there would be Godensky, waiting, and Raoul would see him. What could I do to escape from such an impasse?
CHAPTER IX
MAXINE GIVES BACK THE DIAMONDS
I tried to answer the question, to decide something; but my brain felt dead. “I can’t think now. I must trust to luck—trust to luck,” I said to myself, desperately, as Marianne dressed me. “By and by I’ll think it all out.”
But after that my part gave me no more time to think. I was not Maxine de Renzie, but Princess Hélène of Hungaria, whose tragic fate was even more sure and swift than miserable Maxine’s. When Princess Hélène had died in her lover’s arms, however (died as Maxine had not deserved to die), and I was able to pick up the tangled threads of my own life, where I’d laid them down, the questions were still crying out for answer, and must somehow be decided at once.
First, there was Raoul to be put off and got out of the way—Raoul, my best beloved, whose help and protection I needed so much, yet must forego, and hurt him instead.
The stage-door keeper had orders to let him “come behind,” and so he was already waiting at the door of my little boudoir by the time Hélène had died, the curtain had gone down, and Maxine de Renzie had been able to leave the stage.
As we went together into the room, he caught both my hands, crushing them tightly in his, and kissing them over and over again. But his face was pale and sad, and a new fear sprang up in my heart, like a sudden live flame among red ashes.
“What is it, Raoul?—why do you look like that?” I asked; while inside my head another question sounded like a shriek. “What if some word had come to him in the theatre—about the treaty?”
Then I could have cried as a child cries, with the snapping of the tension, when he answered: “It was only that terrible last scene, darling. I’ve seen you die in other parts. But it never affected me like this. Perhaps it’s because you didn’t belong to me in those days. Or is it that you were more realistic in your acting to-night than ever before? Anyway, it was awful—so horribly real. It was all I could do to sit still and not jump out of the box to save you. Prince Cyril was a poor chap not to thwart the villain. I should have killed him in the third act, and then Hélène might have been happily married, instead of dying.”
“I believe you would have killed him,” I said.
“I know I should. It’s a mistake not to be jealous. I admit that I’m jealous. But such jealousy is a compliment to a woman, my dearest, not an insult.”
“How you feel things!” I exclaimed. “Even a play on the stage—”
“If the woman I love is the heroine.”
“Will you ever be blasé, like the rest of the men I know?” I laughed, though I could have sobbed.
“Never, I think. It isn’t in me. Do you despise me for my enthusiasm?”
“I only love you the more,” I said, wondering every instant, in a kind of horrid undertone, how I was to get him away.
“I admit I wasn’t made for diplomacy,” he went on. “I wish, I had money enough to get out of it and take you off the stage, away into some beautiful, peaceful world, where we need think of nothing but our love for each other, and the good we might do others because of our love, and to keep our world beautiful. Would you go with me?”
“Ah, if I could!” I sighed. “If I could go with you to-morrow, away into that beautiful, peaceful world. But-who knows? Meanwhile—”
“Meanwhile, you don’t mean to send me away from you?” he pleaded, in a coaxing way he has, which is part of his charm, and makes him seem like a boy. “You don’t know what it is, after that scene of your death on the stage, where I couldn’t get to you—where another man was your lover—to touch you again, alive and warm, your own adorable, vivid self. You will let me go home with you, in your carriage, anyhow as far as the house, and kiss you good-night there, even if you’re so tired you must drive me out then?”
I would have given all my success of that night, and more, to say “yes.” But instead I had to stumble into excuses. I had to argue that we mustn’t be seen leaving the theatre together—yet, until everyone knew that we were engaged. As for letting him come to me at home, if he dreamt how my head ached, he wouldn’t ask it. I almost broke down as I said this; and poor Raoul was so sorry for me that he immediately offered to leave me at once.
“It’s a great sacrifice, though, to give up what I’ve been looking forward to for days,” he said, “and to let you go from me to-night of all nights.”
“Why to-night of all nights?”, I asked quickly, my coward conscience frightening me again.
“Only because I love you more than ever, and—it’s a stupid feeling, of course, I suppose all the fault of that last scene in the play—yet I feel as if—But no, I don’t want to say it.”
“You must say it,” I cried.
“Well, if only to hear you contradict me, then. I feel as if I were in danger of losing you. It’s just a feeling—a weight on my heart. Nothing more. Rather womanish, isn’t it?”
“Not womanish, but foolish,” I said. “Shake off the feeling, as one wakes up from a nightmare. Think of to-morrow. Meeting then will be all the sweeter.” As I spoke, it was as if a voice echoed mine, saying different words mockingly. “If there be any meeting—to-morrow, or ever.”
I shut my ears to the voice, and went on quickly:
“Before we say good-bye, I’ve something to show you—something you’ll like very much. Wait here till I get it from the next room.”
Marianne was tidying my dressing-room for the night, bustling here and there, a dear old, comfortable, dependable thing. She was delighted with my success, which she knew all about, of course; but she was not in the least excited, because she had loyally expected me to succeed, and would have thought the sky must be about to fall if I had failed. She was as placid as she was on other, less important nights, far more placid than she would have been if she had known that she was guarding not only my jewellery, but a famous diamond necklace, worth at least five hundred thousand francs.
There it was, under the lowest tray of my jewel box. I had felt perfectly safe in leaving it there, for I knew that nothing on earth—short of a bomb explosion—could tempt the good creature out of my dressing-room in my absence, and that even if a bomb did explode, she would try to be blown up with my jewel box clutched in her hands.
Saying nothing to Marianne, who was brushing a little stage dust off my third act dress, with my back to her I took out tray after tray from the box (which always came with us to the theatre and went away again in my carriage) until the electric light over the dressing table set the diamonds on fire.
Really, I said to myself, they were wonderful stones. I had no idea how magnificent they were. Not that there were a great many of them. The necklace was composed of a single row of diamonds, with six flat tassels depending from it. But the smallest stones at the back, where the clasp came, were as large as my little finger nail, and the largest were almost the size of a filbert. All were of perfect colour and fire, extraordinarily deep and faultlessly shaped, as well as flawless. Besides, the necklace had a history which would have made it interesting even if it hadn’t been intrinsically of half its value.
With the first thrill of pleasure I had felt since I knew that the treaty had disappeared I lifted the beautiful diamonds from the box, and slipped them into a small embroidered bag of pink and silver brocade which lay on the table. It was a foolish but pretty little bag, which a friend had made and sent to me at the theatre a few nights ago, and was intended to carry a purse and handkerchief. But I had never used it yet. Now it seemed a convenient receptacle for the necklace, and I suddenly planned out my way of giving it to Raoul.
At first, earlier in the evening, I had meant to put the diamonds in his hands and say, “See what I have for you!” But now I had changed my mind, because he must be induced to go away as quickly as possible—quite, quite away from the theatre, so that there would be no danger of his seeing Count Godensky at the stage door. I was not sorry that Raoul was jealous, because, as he said, his jealousy was a compliment to me; and it is possible only for a cold man never to be jealous of a woman in my profession, who lives in the eyes of the world. But I did not want him to be jealous of the Russian; and he would be horribly jealous, if he thought that he had the least cause.
If I showed him the diamonds now, he would want to stop and talk. He would ask me questions which I would rather not answer until I’d seen Ivor Dundas again, and knew better what to say—whether truth or fiction. Still, I wished Raoul to have the necklace to-night, because it would mean all the difference to him between constant, gnawing anxiety, and the joy of deliverance. Let him have a happy night, even though I was sending him away, even though I did not know what to-morrow might bring, either for him or for me.
I tied the gold cords of the bag in two hard knots, and went out with it to Raoul in the next room.
“This holds something precious,” I said, smiling at him, and making a mystery. “You’ll value the something, I know—partly for itself, partly because I—because I’ve been at a lot of trouble to get it for you. When you see it, you’ll be more resigned not to see me—just for tonight. But you’re to write me a letter, please, and describe accurately every one of your sensations on opening the bag. Also, you may say in your letter a few kind things about me, if you like. And I want it to come to me when I first wake up to-morrow morning. So go now, dearest, and have the sensations, and write about them. I shall be thinking of you every minute, asleep or awake.”
“Why mayn’t I look now?” asked Raoul, taking the soft mass of pink and silver from me, in the nice, clumsy way a big man has of handling a woman’s things.
“Because—just because. But perhaps you’ll guess why, by and by,” I said. Then I held up my face to be kissed, and he bundled the small bag away in an inside pocket of his coat, as carelessly as if it held nothing but a handkerchief and a pair of gloves.
“Be careful!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. But I don’t think he heard, for he had me in his arms and was kissing me as if he knew the fear in my heart—the fear that it might be for the last time.
“This holds something precious,” I said.
CHAPTER X
MAXINE DRIVES WITH THE ENEMY
When Raoul was gone I made Marianne hurry me out of the cloth-of-gold and filmy tissue in which the unfortunate Princess Hélène had died, and into the black gown in which the almost equally unfortunate Maxine had come to the theatre. I did not even stop to take off my make-up, for though the play was an unusually short one, and all the actors and actresses had followed my example of prompt readiness for all four acts, it lacked twenty minutes of twelve when I was dressed. I had to see Count Godensky, get rid of him somehow, and still be in time to keep my appointment with Ivor Dundas, for which I knew he would strain every nerve not to be late.
My electric carriage would be at the stage door, and my plan was to speak to Godensky, if he were waiting, if possible learn in a moment or two whether he had really found out the truth, and then act accordingly. But if I could avoid it, I meant, in any case, to put off a long conversation until later.
I had drawn my veil down before walking out of the theatre, yet Godensky knew me at once, and came forward. Evidently he had been watching the door.
“Good-evening,” he said. “A hundred congratulations.”
He put out his hand, and I had to give him mine, for my chauffeur and the stage-door keeper (to say nothing of Marianne, who followed me closely), and several stage-carpenters, with other employés of the theatre, were within seeing and hearing distance. I wanted no gossip, though that was exactly what might best please Count Godensky.
“I got your note,” I answered, in Russian, though he had spoken in French. “What is it you want to see me about?”
“Something that can’t be told in a moment,” he said. “Something of great importance.”
“I’m very tired,” I sighed. “Can’t it wait until to-morrow?”
I tried to “draw” him, and to a certain extent, I succeeded.
“You wouldn’t ask that question, if you guessed what—I know,” he replied.
Was it a bluff, or did he know—not merely suspect—something?
“I don’t understand you,” I said quietly, though my lips were dry.
“Shall I mention the word—document?” he hinted. “Really, I’m sure you won’t regret it if you let me drive home with you, Mademoiselle.”
“I can’t do that,” I answered. “And I can’t take you into my carriage here. But I’ll stop for you, and wait at the corner Rue Eugène Beauharnais. Then you can go with me until I think it best for you to get out.”
“Very well,” he agreed. “But send your maid home in a cab; I can not talk before her.”
“Yes, you can. She knows no language except French—and a little English. She always drives home with me.”
This was true. But if I had been talking to Raoul, I would perhaps have given the dear old woman her first experience of being sent off by herself. In that case, she would not have minded, for she likes Raoul, admires him as a “dream of a young man,” and already suspected what I hadn’t yet told her—that we were engaged. But with Count Godensky forced upon me as a companion, I would not for any consideration have parted with Marianne.
Three or four minutes after starting I was giving instructions to my chauffeur where to stop, and almost immediately afterwards Godensky appeared. He got in and took the place at my left, Marianne, silent, but doubtless astonished, facing us on the little front seat.
“Now,” I exclaimed. “Please begin quickly.”
“Don’t force me to be too abrupt,” he said. “I would spare you if I could. You speak as if you grudged me every moment with you. Yet I am here because I love you.”
“Oh, please, Monsieur!” I broke in. “You know I’ve told you that is useless.”
“But everything is changed since then. Perhaps now, even your mind will be changed. That happens with women sometimes. I want to warn you of a great danger that threatens you, Maxine. Perhaps, late as it is, I could save you from it if you’d let me.”
“Save me from what?” I asked temporising. “You’re very mysterious, Count Godensky. And I’m Mademoiselle de Renzie except to my very intimate friends.”
“I am your friend, always. Maybe you will even permit me to speak of myself as your ‘intimate friend’ when I have done what I hope to do for you in—in the matter of a certain document which has disappeared.”
I was quivering all over. But I had not lost hope yet; I think that some women, feeling as I did, would have fainted. But it would have been better for me to die and be out of my troubles for ever, than to let myself faint and show Godensky that he had struck home.
“Be quiet. Be cool. Be brave now, if never again,” I said to myself. And my voice sounded perfectly natural as I exclaimed: “Oh, the ‘document’ again. The one you spoke about when we first met to-night. You rouse my curiosity. But I don’t in the least know what you mean.”
“The loss of it is known,” he said.
“Ah, it’s a lost document?”
“As you will be lost, Maxine, if you don’t come to me for the help I’m only too glad to give—on conditions. Let me tell you what they are.”
“Wouldn’t it be more to the point if you told me what the document is, and how it concerns me?” I parried him, determined to bring him to bay.
“Aren’t you evading the point far more than I? The document—which you and I can both see as plainly before our eyes at this instant as though it were in—let us say your hands, or—du Laurier’s, if he were here—that document is far too important even to name within hearing of other ears.”
“Marianne’s? But I told you she can’t understand a word of Russian.”
“One can’t be sure. We can never tell, in these days, who may not be—a spy.”
There was a stab for me! But I would not give him the satisfaction of showing that it hurt. He wanted to confuse me, to put me off my guard; but he should not.
“They say one judges others by one’s self,” I laughed. “Count Godensky, if you throw out such lurid hints about my poor, fat Marianne, I shall begin to wonder if it’s not you who are the spy!”
“Since you trust your woman so implicitly, then,” he went on, “I’ll tell you what you want to know. The document I speak of is the one you took out of the Foreign Office the other day, when you called on your—friend, Monsieur le Vicomte du Laurier.”
“Dear me!” I exclaimed. “You say you want to be my friend, yet you seem to think I am a kleptomaniac. I can’t imagine what I should want with any dry old document out of the Foreign Office, can you?”
“Yes, I can imagine,” said Godensky drily.
“Pray tell me then. Also what document it was. For, joking apart, this is rather a serious accusation.”
“If I make any accusation, it’s less against you than du Laurier.”
“Oh, you make an accusation against him. Why do you make it to me?”
“As a warning.”
“Or because you don’t dare make it to anyone else.”
“Dare! I haven’t accused him thus far, because to do so would brand your name with his.”
“Ah!” I said. “You are very considerate.”
“I don’t pretend to be considerate—except of myself. I’ve waited, and held my hand until now, because I wanted to see you before doing a thing which would mean certain ruin for du Laurier. I love you as much as I ever did; even more, because, in common with most men, I value what I find hard to get. To-night I ask you again to marry me. Give me a different answer from that you gave me before, and I’ll be silent about what I know.”
“What you know of the document you mentioned?” I asked, my heart drumming an echo of its beating in my ears.
“Yes.”
“But—I thought you said that its loss was already discovered?” (Oh, I was keeping myself well under control, though a mistake now would surely cost me more than I dared count!)
For half a second he was taken aback, at a loss what answer to make. Half a second—no more; yet that hardly perceptible hesitation told me what I had been playing with him to find out.
“Discovered by me,” he explained. “That is, by me and one person over whom I have such an influence that he will use his knowledge, or—forget it, according to my advice.”
“There is no such person,” I said to myself. But I didn’t say it aloud. Quickly I named over in my mind such men in the French Foreign Office as were in a position to discover the disappearance of any document under Raoul du Laurier’s charge. There were several who might have done so, some above Raoul in authority, some below; but I was certain that not one of them was an intimate friend of Count Godensky’s. If he had suspected anything the day he met me coming out of the Foreign Office he might, of course, have hinted his suspicions to one of those men (though all along I’d believed him too shrewd to risk the consequences, the ridicule and humiliation of a mistake): but if he had spoken, it would be beyond his power to prevent matters from taking their own course, independent of my decisions and his actions.
I believed now that what I had hoped was true. He was “bluffing.” He wanted me to flounder into some admission, and to make him a promise in order to save the man I loved. I was only a woman, he’d argued, no doubt—an emotional woman, already wrought up to a high pitch of nervous excitement. Perhaps he had expected to have easy work with me. And I don’t think that my silence after his last words discouraged him. He imagined me writhing at the alternative of giving up Raoul or seeing him ruined, and he believed that he knew me well enough to be sure what I would do in the end.
“Well?” he said at last, quite gently.
My eyes had been bent on my lap, but I glanced suddenly up at him, and saw his face in the light of the street lamps as we passed. Count Godensky is not more Mephistophelian in type than any other dark, thin man with a hook nose, keen eyes, heavy browed; a prominent chin and a sharply waxed, military moustache trained to point upward slightly at the ends. But to my fancy he looked absolutely devilish at that moment. Still, I was less afraid of him than I had been since the day I stole the treaty.
“Well,” I said slowly, “I think it’s time that you left me now.”
“That’s your answer? You can’t mean it.”
“I do mean it, just as much as I meant to refuse you the three other times that you did me the same honour. You asked me to hear what you had to say to-night, and I have heard it; so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t press the electric bell for my chauffeur to stop, and—”
“Do you know that you’re pronouncing du Laurier’s doom, to say nothing of your own?”
“No. I don’t know it.”
“Then I haven’t made myself clear enough.”
“That’s true. You haven’t made yourself clear enough.”
“In what detail have I failed? Because—”.
“In the detail of the document. I’ve told you I know nothing about it. You’ve told me you know everything. Yet—”
“So I do.”
“Prove that by saying what it is—to satisfy my curiosity.”
“I’ve explained why I can’t do that—here.”
“Then why should you stay here longer, since that is the point, to my mind. You understood before you came into my carriage that I had no intention of letting you go all the way home with me.”
Count Godensky suddenly laughed. And the laugh frightened me—frightened me horribly, just as I had begun to have confidence in myself, and feel that I had got the best of the game.
CHAPTER XI
MAXINE OPENS THE GATE FOR A MAN
“You are afraid that du Laurier may find out,” he said. “But he knows already.”
“Knows what?”
“That I expected to have the privilege of going to your house with you.”
All that I had gained seemed worthless. Those quiet, sneering words of his almost crushed me. On the load I had struggled to bear without falling they laid one feather too much.
My voice broke. “You—devil!” I cried at him. “You dared to tell Raoul that?”
Opposite, on her narrow little seat, Marianne stirred uneasily. Till now our tones had been quiet, and she could not understand one word we said. She is the soul of discretion and a triumph of good training in her walk of life; but she loves me more than she loves any other creature on earth, and now she could see and hear that the man had driven me to the brink of hysterics. She would have liked to tear his face with her nails, or choke him, I think. If I had given her the word, I believe she would have tried with all her strength—which is not small—and a very good will, to kill him. I was dimly conscious of what her restlessness meant, and vaguely comforted too, by the thought of her supreme loyalty. But I forgot Marianne when Godensky answered my question.
“Yes, I told him. It was the truth. And I’ve always understood that you made a great point of never doing anything which you considered in the least risqué. So why should I suppose you would rather du Laurier didn’t know? You might already have mentioned it to him.”
“He wouldn’t believe you!” I exclaimed, desperately. And my only hope was that I might be right.
“As a matter of fact, he didn’t seem to at first, so I at once understood that you hadn’t spoken of our appointment. But it was too late to atone for my carelessness, and I did the next best thing: justified my veracity. I suggested that, if he didn’t take my word for it, he might stand where he could see us speaking together at the stage door, and—”
“Ah, I am glad of that!” I cut in. “Then he saw that we didn’t drive away together.”
“You jump at conclusions, just like less clever women. I hardly thought you’d receive me into your carriage at the theatre, so I took the precaution of warning du Laurier that he needn’t expect to see that. You would suggest a place for me to meet you, I said. When I knew it, I would inform him if he chose to wait about somewhere for a few minutes.”
“Raoul du Laurier would scorn to spy upon me!” I broke out.
“How hard you are on spies. And how little knowledge of human nature you have, after all, if you don’t understand that a man suddenly out of his head with jealousy will do things of which he’d be incapable when he was sane.”
The argument silenced me. I knew—I had known for a long time—that jealousy could rouse a demon in Raoul. And only to-night he had reminded me that he was a “jealous brute.” I remembered what answer he had made when I asked him what he would do if I deceived him. He said that he would kill me, and kill himself after. As he spoke, the blood had streamed up to his forehead, and streamed back again, leaving him pale. A flash like steel had shot out of his eyes—the dear eyes that are not cold. It was true, as this cruel wretch reminded me, Raoul would do things under the torture of jealousy that he would cut off his hand sooner than do when his own, sweet, poet-nature was in ascendancy.
“As a proof of what I say,” Godensky went on, “du Laurier did wait, did hear from me the place where you were to stop and pick me up. And if it wouldn’t be the worst of form to bet, I’d bet that he found some way of getting there in time to see that I had told the truth.”
“You coward!” I stammered.
“On the contrary, a brave man. I’ve heard that du Laurier is a fine shot, and that very few men in Paris can touch him with the foils. So you see—”
“You want to frighten me!” I exclaimed.
“You misjudge me in every way.”
My only answer was to tell Marianne to press the button which gives the signal for my chauffeur to stop. Instantly the electric carriage slowed down, then came to a standstill. My man opened the door and Count Godensky submitted to my will. Nevertheless, he was far from being in a submissive mood, as I did not need to be reminded by the tone of his voice when he said “au revoir.”
Nothing could have been more polite than the words or his way of speaking them, as he stood in the street with his hat in his hand. But to me they meant a threat, and as a threat they were intended.
My talk with Godensky at the stage door, my pause to pick him up, and my second pause to set him down, had all taken time, of which I had had little enough at the starting, if I were to meet Ivor Dundas when he arrived. It was two or three minutes after midnight, or so my watch said, when we drew up before the gate of my high-walled garden in the quiet Rue d’Hollande.
A little while ago I had been ready to seize upon almost any expedient for keeping Raoul away from my house to-night, but now, after what I had just heard from Godensky, I prayed to see him waiting for me.
Nobody (except Ivor, concerning whom I’d given orders) would be let in so late at night, during my absence, not even Raoul himself; so if he had come to reproach me, or break with me, he would have to stand outside the locked gate till I appeared. I looked for him longingly, but he was not there. There was, to be sure, a motor brougham in the street, for a wonder (usually the Rue d’Hollande is as empty as a desert, after eleven o’clock), but a girl’s face peered out at me from the window—an impish, curiously abnormal little face it was—extinguishing the spark of hope that sprang to life as I caught sight of the carriage.
It was standing before the closed gate of a house almost opposite mine, and the girl seemed somewhat interested in me; but I was not at all interested in her, and I hate being stared at as if I were something in a museum.
The gate is always kept locked at night, when I’m at the theatre; but Marianne has the key, and we let ourselves in when we come, for only old Henri sits up, and he is growing a little deaf. A moment, and we were inside, the chauffeur spinning away to the garage.
Usually I am newly delighted every night with my quaint old house and its small, but pretty garden, to which it seems delightful to come home after hours of hard work at the theatre. But to-night, though a cheerful light shone out from between the drawn curtains of the salon, the place looked inexpressibly dreary, even forbidding, to me. I felt that I hated the house, though I had chosen it after a long search for peacefulness and privacy. How gloomy, how dead, was the street beyond the high wall, with all its windows closed like the eyes of corpses. There was a moist, depressing smell of earth after long-continued rains, in the garden. No wonder the place had been to let at a bargain, for a long term! There had been a murder in it once, and it had stood empty for twelve or thirteen of the fifteen years since the almost forgotten tragedy. I had been the tenant for two years now—before I became a “star,” with a theatre of my own in Paris. I had had no fear of the ghost said to haunt the house. Indeed, I remembered thinking, and saying, that the story only made the place more interesting. But now I said to myself that I wished I had never spoken so lightly. Perhaps the ghost had brought me bad luck. I felt as if the murder must have happened on just such a still, brooding, damp night as this. Maybe it was the anniversary, if I only knew.
I went indoors, Marianne following. Henri, very thin, very precise, withered like a winter apple, had fallen into a doze in the hall, where he had sat, hoping to hear the stopping of my carriage. He rose up, bowing and blinking, just as he had done often before, and would often again—if life were to go on for me in the old way. He regretted not having heard Mademoiselle. Would Mademoiselle take supper?
No, Mademoiselle would not take supper. She wanted nothing, and Henri might go to bed.
“I thank Mademoiselle. When I have closed the house.”
“But I don’t want the house closed,” I said. “I shall sit up for awhile. It’s hot—close and stuffy. I may like to have the windows open.”
“The visitor Mademoiselle expected did not arrive. Perhaps—”
“If he comes, Marianne or I will let him in. But he may not come, now it is so late.”
When Henri had gone, I told Marianne that she might go, too. I did not want her to wait. If the person I had expected should call, it was a very old friend; in fact, Mr. Ivor Dundas, whom Marianne must remember in London. He was to call—if he did call—only on a matter of business, which would take but a few minutes to get through, and possibly he would not even come into the house. If the gate-bell rang, I would answer it myself, and speak with Mr. Dundas, perhaps in the garden. Then I would let him out and come straight upstairs. Marianne might go to bed if she wished.
“I do not wish, unless Mademoiselle particularly desires me to do so,” said she. “I do not rest well when I have not been allowed to undress Mademoiselle.”
“Sit up, then, in your own room, and wait there for me till I ring for you,” I replied. “I shan’t be late, whether Mr. Dundas comes or doesn’t come.”
“Supposing the gate-bell should ring, and Mademoiselle should go, yet it should not be the Monsieur she expects, but another person whom she would not care to admit?”
I knew of what she was thinking, and of whom.
“There’s no fear of that. No fear of any kind,” I answered.
She took off my cloak, and went upstairs reluctantly, carrying my jewel box.
I walked into the drawing-room, which was lighted and looked very bright and charming, with its many flowers and framed photographs, and the delightful Louis Quinze furniture, which I had so enjoyed picking up here and there at antique shops or at private sales.
I flung myself on the sofa, but I could not rest. In a moment I was up again, moving about, looking at the clock, comparing it with my watch, wondering what could have happened to make Ivor fail in keeping his promise to be prompt on the hour of twelve.
Of course, a hundred harmless things might have kept him, but I thought only of the worst, and was working myself up to a frenzy when at last I heard the gate-bell. I had been in the house no more than twelve or fourteen minutes, but it seemed an hour, and I gave a sob of relief as I rushed out, down the garden path, to let my visitor in.
Fumbling a little at the lock, always a little difficult if one were in a hurry, I asked myself what if, as Marianne had suggested, it were not Ivor Dundas, but someone else—Raoul, perhaps—or the man who had been in her mind: Godensky.
But it was Ivor.
“What news?” I questioned him, my voice sounding queer and far away in my own ears.
“I don’t know whether you’ll call it news or not, though plenty of things have happened. I’m awfully sorry to be late—”
I wouldn’t let him finish, standing there, but took him by the arm and drew him into the garden, pushing the gate shut behind him as I did so. Yet I forgot to lock it, and naturally it did not occur to Ivor that it ought to be fastened.
Once inside, in the garden, I was going to make him begin again, as I had told Marianne I would. But suddenly I bethought myself that he might have been followed; that there might be watchers behind that high wall, watchers who would try to be listeners too, and whose ears would be very different from old Henri’s. “Come into the house,” I said, in a low voice, “before you begin to tell anything.” Then, when we were inside, I could not even wait for him to go on of his own accord and in his own way.
“The treaty?” I asked. “Have you got hold of it?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“But you’ve heard of it? Oh, say you’ve heard something!”
“If I haven’t, it isn’t because I’ve sat down and waited for news to come. I went back to the Gare du Nord after you left me, to try and get on the track of the men who travelled with me in the train to Dover. But I was sent off on the wrong scent, and wasted a lot of time, worse luck—I’ll tell you about it later, if you care to hear details. Then, when that game was up, I did what I wish I’d done at first, found out and consulted a private detective, said to be one of the best in Paris—”
“You told your story—my story—to a detective?” I gasped.
“No. Certainly not. I said I’d lost something of value, given me by a lady whose name I couldn’t bring into the affair. I was George Sandford, too, not Mr. Dundas. I described my travelling companions, telling all that happened on the way, and offered big pay if he could find them quickly—especially the little fellow. He held out hopes of spotting them to-night, so don’t be desperate, my poor girl. The detective chap seemed really to think he’d not have much difficulty in tracking down our man; and even if he’s parted with the treaty, we can find out what he’s done with it, no doubt. Girard says—”
“Girard!” I caught Ivor up. “Is your detective’s name Anatole Girard, and does he live in Rue du Capucin Blanc?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“I know too much of him,” I answered bitterly.
“Isn’t he clever, after all?”
“Far too clever. I’d rather you had gone to any other detective in Paris—or to none.”
“Why, what’s wrong with him?” Ivor began to be distressed.
“Only that he’s a personal friend of my worst enemy—the man I spoke of to you this evening—Count Godensky. I’ve heard so from Godensky himself, who mentioned the acquaintance once when Girard had just succeeded in a case everybody was talking about.”
“By Jove, what a beastly coincidence!” exclaimed Ivor, horribly disappointed at having done exactly the wrong thing, when he had tried so hard to do the right one. “Yet how could I have dreamed of it?”
“You couldn’t,” I admitted, hopelessly. “Nothing is your fault. All that’s happened would have happened just the same, no matter what messenger the Foreign Secretary had sent to me. It’s fate. And it’s my punishment.”
“Still, even if Godensky and Girard are friends,” Ivor tried to console me, “it isn’t likely that the Count has talked to the detective about you and the affair of the treaty.”
“He may have gone to him for help in finding out things he couldn’t find out himself.”
“Hardly, I should say, until there’d been time for him to fear failure. No, the chances are that Girard will have no inner knowledge of the matter I’ve put into his hands; and if he’s a man of honour, he’s bound to do the best he can for me, as his employer. Have you seen du Laurier?”
“Yes. At the theatre. Nothing bad had happened to him yet; but that brute Godensky has made dreadful mischief between us. If only I’d known that you would be so late, I might have explained everything to him.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Ivor, so humbly and so sadly that I pitied him (but not half as much as I pitied myself, even though I hadn’t forgotten that hint he had let drop about a great sacrifice—a girl he loved, whom he had thrown over, somehow, to come to me). “I made every effort to be in time. It seems a piece with the rest of my horrible luck to-day that I was prevented. I hope, at least, that du Laurier knows about the necklace?”
“He does, by this,” I answered. “Yet I’m afraid he won’t be in a mood to take much comfort from it—thanks to that wretch. You know Raoul hasn’t a practical bone in his body. He will think I’ve deceived him, and nothing else will matter. I must—” But I broke off, and laid my hand on Ivor’s arm. “What’s that?” I whispered. “Did you hear anything then?”
Ivor shook his head. And we both listened.
“It’s a step outside, on the gravel path,” said I, my heart beginning to knock against my side. “I forgot to lock the gate. Somebody has come into the garden. What if it should be Raoul—what if he has seen our shadows on the curtain?”
Mechanically we moved apart, Ivor making a gesture to reassure me, on account of the position of the lights. He was right. Our shadows couldn’t have fallen on the curtain.
As we stood listening, there came a knock at the front door. It was Raoul’s knock. I was sure of that.
If only Ivor had arrived a quarter of an hour earlier, at the time appointed, I should have hurried him away before this, so that I might write to Raoul; but now I could not think what to do for the best—what to do, that things might not be made far worse instead of better between Raoul and me. I had suffered so much that my power of quick decision, on which I’d so often prided myself vaingloriously, seemed gone.
“It is Raoul,” I said. “What shall I do?”
“Let him in, of course, and introduce me. Don’t act as if you were afraid. Say that I came to see you on important business concerning a friend of yours in England, and had to call after the theatre because I’m leaving Paris by the first train in the morning.”
“No use.”
“Why not? When a man loves a woman, he trusts her.”
“No man of Latin blood, I think. And Raoul’s already angry. He has the right to be—or would have, if Godensky had been telling him the truth. And I refused to let him come here. I said I was going straight to bed, I was so tired. He’s knocking again. Hide yourself, and I’ll let him in. Oh, why do you stand there, looking at me like that? Go into that room,” and I pointed, then pushed him towards the door. “You can get through the window and out of the garden—softly—while Raoul and I are talking.”
“If you insist,” said Ivor. “But you’re wrong. The best thing—”
“Go—go, I tell you. Don’t argue. I know best,” I cut him short, in a sharp whisper, pushing him again.
This time he made no more objections, but went into the adjoining room, my boudoir. The key was in the door; I turned it in the lock, snatched it out, and dropped it into a bowl of flowers on a table close by. That done, I flew out of the drawing-room into the little entrance hall, and opened the front door. There stood Raoul, his face dead white, and very stern in the light of the hall lamp. I had never seen him like that before.
“I know why you’re here,” I began quickly, before he could speak. “Count Godensky told me what he said to you. I—hoped you would come.”
“Is this why you wished to know what I would do if you deceived me?” he asked, with the bitterest reproach in eyes and voice.
“No. For I hadn’t deceived you,” I answered. “I haven’t deceived you now. If you loved me, you’d believe me, Raoul.”
I put out my hand and took his. He gave mine no pressure, but he let me draw him into the house.
“For God’s sake, give me back my faith in you, if you can,” he said. “It’s death to lose it. I came here wanting to die.”
“After you’d killed me, as you said?”
“Perhaps. I couldn’t keep away. I had to come. If you have any explanation, for the love of Heaven, tell me what it is.”
“You know me, and you know Godensky—yet you need an explanation of anything evil said of me by him?” In this way I hoped to disarm Raoul; but he had been half-mad, I think, and was scarcely sane now, such a power had jealousy over his better self.
“Don’t play with me!” he exclaimed. “I can’t bear it. You sent me away. Yet you had an appointment with Godensky. You took him into your carriage; and now—”
“Marianne was in the carriage. If I could have had you with me, I should have packed her off by herself, alone, that I—might be alone with you. Oh, Raoul, it isn’t possible you believe that I could lie to you for Godensky’s sake—a man like that! If I’d cared for him, why shouldn’t I have accepted him instead of you? Could I have changed so quickly, do you think?”
“I don’t think; I’m not able to think. I can only feel,” he answered.
“Then—feel sure that I love you—no man but you—now and always.”
“Oh, Maxine!” he stammered. “Am I a fool, or wise, to let myself believe you?”
“You are wise,” I answered, as firmly as if I deserved the full faith I was claiming from him as my right. “If you wouldn’t believe, without my insisting, without my explaining and defending myself, I’d tell you nothing. But you do believe, just because you love me—I see it in your face, and thank God for it. So I’ll tell you this. Count Godensky hates me, because I couldn’t and wouldn’t love him, and he hates you because he thinks I love you. He—” I paused for a second. A wild thought had flashed like the light of a beacon in my brain. If I could say something now which, when the blow fell—if it did fall—might come back to Raoul’s mind and convince him instantly that it was Godensky, not I, who had stolen the treaty and broken him! If I could make him believe the whole thing a monstrous plot of Godensky’s to revenge himself on a woman who’d refused him, by cleverly implicating her in her lover’s ruin, by throwing guilt upon her while she was, in reality, innocent! If I could suggest that to Raoul now, while his ears were open, I might hold his love against the world, no matter what happened afterward.
It was a mad idea and a wicked one, perhaps; but I was at my wits’ end and desperate. Though not guilty of this one crime which I would shift upon his shoulders if I could, as a means of escaping from the trap he’d helped to set, Godensky was capable of it, and guilty of others, I was sure, which had never been brought home to him. I believed that he, too, was a spy, just as I was; and far worse, because if he were one he betrayed his own country, while I never had done that, never would.
All these thoughts rushed through my head in a second; and I think that Raoul could hardly have noticed the pause before I began to speak again.
“He—Godensky—would do anything to part you and me,” I said. “There’s no plot too sly and vile for him to conceive and carry out against me—and you. No lie too base for him to tell you—or others—about me. He sent me a letter at the theatre—soon after you’d left me the first time. In it, he said that I must give him a few minutes after the play, unless I wanted some dreadful harm to come to you—something concerning your career. That frightened me, though I might have guessed it was only a trick. Indeed, I did guess, but I couldn’t be sure, so I saw him. I didn’t want you to know—I tell you that frankly, Raoul. Because I’d told you not to come home with me, I hoped you wouldn’t find out that I meant to let Count Godensky drive part of the way back with me and Marianne. I ran the risk, and—the very thing happened which I ought to have known would happen. As for what he had to tell me, it was nothing; only vague hints of trouble from which he, as one of an inner circle, might save you, if I—would be grateful enough.”
“The scoundrel!” broke out Raoul, convinced now, his eyes blazing. “I’ll—”
He stopped suddenly. But I knew what had been on his lips to say. He meant to send a challenge to Count Godensky. I must prevent him from doing that.
“No, Raoul,” I said, as if he had finished his sentence, “you musn’t fight. For my sake, you mustn’t. Don’t you see, it’s just what he’d like best? It would be a way of doing me the most dreadful injury. Think of the scandal. Oh, you will think of it, when you’re cooler. For you, I would not fear much, for I know what a swordsman you are, and what a shot—far superior to Godensky, and with right on your side. But I would fear for myself. Promise you won’t bring this trouble upon me.”
“I promise,” he answered. “Oh, my darling, what wouldn’t I promise you, to atone for my brutal injustice to an angel? How thankful I am that I came to you to-night! I meant not to come. I was afraid of myself, and what I might do. But at last I couldn’t hold out against the something that seemed forcing me here in spite of all resistance. Do you forgive me?”
“As a reward for your promise,” I said, smiling at him through tears that would come because I was worn out, and because I knew that it was I who needed his forgiveness, not he mine. “Now are you happy again?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m happy,” he said. “Though on the way to this house I didn’t dream that it would be possible for me to know happiness any more in this world. And even at your gate—” He stopped suddenly, and his face changed. I waited an instant, but seeing that he didn’t mean to go on, I could not resist questioning him. I had to know what had happened at my gate.
“Even at the gate—what?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m sorry I spoke. I want to show you how completely I trust you now, by not speaking of that.”
But this reticence of his only made me more anxious to hear what he had been going to say. I was afraid that I could guess. But I must have it from his lips, and be able to explain away the mystery which, when it recurred to him in the future, might make him doubt me, even though in this moment of exaltation he did not doubt.
“Yes, speak of it,” I said. “All the more because it is nothing. For it can be nothing.”
“I want to punish myself for asking an explanation about Godensky, by not allowing you to explain this other thing,” insisted poor, loyal, repentant Raoul. “Then—at the time—it made all the rest seem worse, a thousand times worse. But I saw through black spectacles. Now I see through rose-coloured ones.”
“I’d rather you saw through your own dear eyes, without any spectacles. You must tell me what you’re thinking of, dear. For my own sake, if not yours.”
“Well—if you will know. But, remember, darling, I’m going to put it out of my mind. I’ll ask you no questions, I’ll only—tell you the thing itself. As I said, I didn’t come here directly after seeing Godensky get into your carriage. I wandered about like a madman—and I thought of the Seine.”
“Oh—you must indeed have been mad!”
“I was. But that something saved me—the something that drove me to find you. I walked here, by roundabout ways, but always coming nearer and nearer, as if being drawn into a whirlpool. At last, I was in this street, on the side opposite your house. I hadn’t made up my mind yet, that I would try to see you. I didn’t know what I would do. I stood still, and tried to think. It was very black, in the angle between two garden walls where the big plane tree sprouts up, you know. Nobody who didn’t expect to find a man would have noticed me in the darkness. I hadn’t been there for two minutes when a man turned the corner, walking very fast. As he passed the street lamp just before reaching the garden wall, I saw him plainly—not his face, but his figure, and he was young and well dressed, in travelling clothes. I thought he looked like an Englishman. He went straight to your gate and rang. A moment later someone, I couldn’t see who, opened the gate and let him in. Involuntarily I took a step forward, with the idea of following—of pushing my way in to see who he was and who had opened the gate. But I wasn’t quite mad enough to act like a cad. The gate shut. Oh, Maxine, there were evil and cruel thoughts in my mind, I confess it to you—but how they made me suffer! I stood as if I were turned to stone, and I only wished that I might be, for a stone knows no pain. Just then a motor cab going slowly along the street stopped in front of your gate. There were two women in it. I could see them by the light of the street lamp, though not as plainly as I’d seen the man, and they appeared to be arguing very excitedly about something. Whatever it was, it must have been in some way concerned with you, or your affairs, because they were tremendously interested in the house. They both looked out, and one pointed several times. Even if I’d intended to go in, I wouldn’t have gone while they were there. But the very fact that they were there roused me out of the kind of lethargy of misery I’d fallen into. I wondered who they were, and if they meant you harm or good. When they had driven away I made up my mind that I would see you if I could. I tried the gate, and found it unlocked. I walked in, and—there were lights in these windows. I knew you couldn’t have gone to bed yet, though you’d said you were so tired. There was death in my heart then, for you and for me, Maxine, for—the gate hadn’t opened again, and—”
“I know what you thought!” I broke in, my heart beating so now that my voice shook a little, though I struggled to seem calm. “You said to yourself, ‘It was Maxine who let the man in. He is with her now. I shall find them together.’”
“Yes,” Raoul admitted. “But I didn’t try the handle of the door, as I had of the gate. I rang. I couldn’t bring myself to take you unawares.”
“Do you think still that I let a man in, and hid him when I heard you ring?” I asked. (For an instant I was inclined to tell the story Ivor had advised me to tell; but I saw how excited Raoul was; I saw how, in painting the picture for me, he lived through the scene again, and, in spite of himself, suffered almost as keenly as he had suffered in the experience. I saw how his suspicions of me came crawling into his heart, though he strove to lash them back. I dared not bring Ivor out from the other room, if he were still there. He was too handsome, too young, too attractive in every way. If Raoul had been jealous of Count Godensky, whom he knew I had refused, what would he feel towards Ivor Dundas, a stranger whose name I had never mentioned, though he was received at my house after midnight? I was thankful I hadn’t taken Ivor’s advice and introduced the two men at first, for in his then mood Raoul would have listened to no explanations. He and I would never have arrived at the understanding we had reached now. And not having been frank at first, I must be secret to the end.)
The very asking of such a bold question—“Do you think I let a man in, and hid him?” helped my cause with Raoul.
“No,” he said, “I can’t think it. I won’t, and don’t think it. And you need tell me nothing. I love you. And so help me God, I won’t distrust you again!”
Just as it entered my mind to risk everything on the chance that Ivor had by this time found his way out, I heard, or fancied I heard, a faint sound in the next room. He was there still.
Instead of throwing open the door, as it had occurred to me to do, saying, “Let us look for the man, and make sure no one else let him in,” I laughed out abruptly, as if on a sudden thought, but really to cover the sound if it should come again.
“Oh, Raoul!” I exclaimed, in the midst of the laughter with which I surprised him. “You’re taking this too seriously. A thousand times I thank you for trusting me in spite of appearances, but—after all, were they so much against me? You seem to think I am the only young woman in this house. Marianne, poor dear, is old enough, it’s true. But I have a femme de chambre and a cuisinière, both under twenty-five, both pretty, and both engaged to be married.” (This was true. Ah, what a comfort to speak the truth to him!) “Doesn’t it occur to you that, at this very moment, a couple of lovers may be sitting hand in hand on the seat under the old yew arbour? Can’t you imagine how they started and tried to hold their breath lest you should hear, as you opened the gate and came up the path?”
“Forgive me!” murmured Raoul, in the depths of remorse again.
“Shall we go and look, or shall we leave them in peace?”
“Leave them in peace, by all means.”
“The man will be slipping away soon, no doubt. Both Thérèse and Annette are good little girls.”
“Don’t let’s bother about them. You will be sending me away soon, too, and I shall deserve it. Brute that I am. You were so tired, and I—”
“Oh, I’m better now,” I said. “Of course I must send you away by and by, but not quite yet. First, I want to ask if you weren’t glad when you saw the jewels?”
“Jewels?” echoed Raoul. “What jewels?”
“You don’t mean to say you haven’t yet opened the little bag I gave you at the theatre?” I exclaimed.
Raoul looked half ashamed. “Dearest, don’t think me ungrateful,” he said, “but before I had a chance to open it I met Godensky, and he told me—that lie. It lit a fire in my brain. I forgot all about the bag, and haven’t thought of it again till this minute.”
At last I laughed with sincerity. “Oh, Raoul, Raoul, you’re not fit for this work-a-day world! Well, I’m glad, after all, that I shall be with you, when you see what that little insignificant bag which you’ve forgotten all this tune has in it. Take it out of your pocket, and let’s open it together.”
For the moment I was almost happy; and that Raoul would be happy, I knew.
His hand went to the inner pocket of his coat, into which I had seen him put the brocade bag. But it did not come out again. It groped; and his face flushed. “Good heavens, Maxine,” he said, “I hope you weren’t in earnest when you told me that bag held something very valuable to us both, for I’ve lost it. You know, I’ve been almost mad. I had my handkerchief in that pocket. I must have pulled it out, and—”
My knees seemed to give way under me. I half fell onto a sofa.
“Raoul,” I said, in a queer stifled voice, “the bag had in it the Duchess de Montpellier’s diamonds.”