CHAPTER XXIX
SACRIFICE
"Did you mean it?"
Errington's voice broke harshly through the silence of the little anteroom where Diana waited alone. It had a curious, cracked sound, and his breath laboured like that of a man who has run himself out.
For a moment she kept her face hidden, trying to steady herself, but at last she turned towards him, and in her eyes was a soft shining—a strange, sweet fire.
"Max!" The whispered name was hardly audible; tremulous and wistful it seemed to creep across the room.
But he heard it. In a moment his arms were round her, and he had gathered her close against his heart. And so they remained for a space, neither speaking.
Presently Diana lifted her head.
"Max, it was because I loved you so that I was so hard and bitter—only because I loved you so."
"I know," was all he said. And he kissed her hair.
"Do you?"—wistfully. "I wonder if—if a man can understand how a woman can be so cruel to what she loves?"
And as he had no answer to this (since, after all, a man cannot be expected to understand all—or even very much—that a woman does), he kissed her lips.
She crept a little nearer to him.
"Max! Do you still care for me—like that?" There was wonder and thanksgiving in her voice. "Oh, my dear, I'm down in the dust at your feet—I've failed you utterly, wronged you every way. Even if you forgive me, I shall never forgive myself. But I'm—all yours, Max."
With a sudden jealous movement he folded her more closely in his arms.
"Let me have a few moments of this," he muttered, a little breathlessly.
"A few moments of thinking you have come back to me."
"But I have come back to you!" Her eyes grew wide and startled with a sudden, desperate apprehension. "You won't send me away again—not now?"
His face twisted with pain.
"Beloved, I must! God knows how hard it will be—but there is no other way."
"No other way?" She broke from his arms, searching his face with her frightened eyes. "What do you mean? . . . What do you mean? Don't you—care—any longer?"
He smiled, as a man may who is asked whether the sun will rise to-morrow.
"Not that, beloved. Never that. I've always cared, and I shall go on caring through this world and into the next—even though, after to-night, we may never be together again."
"Never—together again?" She clung to him. "Oh, why do you say such things? I can't—I can't live without you now. Max, I'm sorry—sorry! I've been punished enough—don't punish me any more by sending me away from you."
"Punish you! Heart's dearest, there has never been any thought of punishment in my mind. Heaven knows, I've reproached myself bitterly enough for all the misery I've brought on you."
"Then why—why do you talk of sending me away?"
"I'm not going to send you away. It is I who have to go. Oh, beloved! I ought never to have come here this evening. But I thought if I might see you—just once again—before I went out into the night, I should at least have that to remember. . . . And then you sang, and it seemed as though you were calling me. . . ."
"Yes," she said very softly. "I called you. I wanted you so." Then, after a moment, with sudden, womanish curiosity: "How did you know I was singing here to-night?"
"Olga told me. She's bitterly opposed to all that I've been doing, but"—smiling faintly—"she has occasional spasms of compassion, when she remembers that, after all, I'm a poor devil who's being thrust out of paradise."
"She loves you," Diana answered simply. "I think she has loved you—better—than I did, Max. But not more!" she added jealously. "No one could love you more, dear."
After a pause, she asked:
"I suppose Olga told you that I know—everything?"
"Yes. I'm glad you know"—quietly. "It makes it easier for me to tell you why I must go away—out of your life."
She leaned nearer to him, her hands on his shoulders.
"Don't go!" she whispered. "Ah, don't go!"
"I must," he said hoarsely. "Listen, beloved, and then you will see that there is no other way. . . . I married you, believing that when Nadine would be safely settled on the throne, I should be free to live my own life, free to come back to England—and you. If I had not believed that, I shouldn't have told you that I cared; I should have gone away and never seen you again. But now—now I know that I shall never be free, never able to live in England."
He paused, gathering her a little closer into his arms.
"Everything is settled. Russia has helped, and Ruvania is ready to welcome Nadine's return. . . . She is in Paris, now, waiting for me to take her there. . . . It has been a long and difficult matter, and the responsibility of Nadine's well-being in England has been immense. A year ago, the truth as to her identity leaked out somehow—reached our enemies' ears, and since then I've never really known an instant's peace concerning her safety. You remember the attack which was made on her outside the theatre?"
Diana nodded, shame-faced, remembering its ultimate outcome.
"Well, the man who shot at her was in the pay of the Republic—German pay, actually. That yarn about the actor down on his luck was cooked up for the papers, just to throw dust in the eyes of the public. . . . To watch over Nadine's safety has been my work. Now the time has come when she can go back and take her place as Grand Duchess of Ruvania. And I must go with her."
"No, no. Why need you go? You'll have done your work, set her securely on the throne. Ah, Max! don't speak of going, dear." Her voice shook incontrollably.
"There is other work still to be done, beloved—harder work, man's work. And I can't turn away and take my shoulder from the wheel. It needs no great foresight to tell that there is trouble brewing on the Continent; a very little thing would set the whole of Europe in a blaze. And when that time arrives, if Ruvania is to come out of the struggle with her independence unimpaired, it will only be by the utmost effort of all her sons. Nadine cannot stand alone. What can a woman do unaided when the nations are fighting for supremacy? The country will need a man at the helm, and I must stand by Nadine."
"But why you? Why not another?"
"No other is under the same compulsion as I. As you know, my father put his wife first and his country second. It is difficult to blame him . . . she was very beautiful, my mother. But no man has the right to turn away from his allotted task. And because my father did that, the call to me to serve my country is doubly strong. I have to pay back that of which he robbed her."
"And have I no claim? Max! Max! Doesn't your love count at all?"
The sad, grieving words wrung his heart.
"Why, yes," he said unsteadily. "That's the biggest thing in the world—our love—isn't it? But this other is a debt of honour, and you wouldn't want me to shirk that, would you, sweet? I must pay—even if it costs me my happiness. . . . It may seem to you as though I'd set your happiness, too, aside. God knows, it hasn't been easy! But what could I do? I conceive that a man's honour stands before everything. That was why I let you believe—what you did. My word was given. I couldn't clear myself. . . . So you see, now, beloved, why we must part."
"No," she said quietly. "I don't see. Why can't I come to Ruvania with you?"
A sudden light leaped into his eyes, but it died away almost instantly.
He shook his head.
"No, you can't come with me. Because—don't you see, dear?"—very gently and pitifully. "As my wife, as cousin of the Grand Duchess herself, you couldn't still be—a professional singer."
There was a long silence. Slowly Diana drew away from her husband, staring at him with dilated eyes.
"Then that—that was what Baroni meant when, he told me a time would come when your wife could no longer sing in public?"
Max bent his head.
"Yes. That was what he meant."
Diana stood silently clasping and unclasping her hands. Presently she spoke again, and there was a new note in her voice—a note of quiet gravity and steadfast decision.
"Dear, I am coming with you. The singing"—smiling a little tremulously—"doesn't count—against love."
Max made a sudden movement as though to take her in his arms, then checked himself as suddenly.
"No," he said quietly. "You can't come with me. It would be impossible—out of the question. You haven't realised all it would entail. After being a famous singer—to become merely a private gentlewoman—a lady of a little unimportant Court! The very idea is absurd. Always you would miss the splendour of your life, the triumphs, the being fêted and made much of—everything that your singing has brought you. It would be inevitable. And I couldn't endure to see the regret growing in your eyes day by day. Oh, my dear, don't think I don't realise the generosity of the thought—and bless you for it a thousand times! But I won't let you pay with the rest of your life for a heaven-kind impulse of the moment."
His words fell on Diana's consciousness, each one weighted with a world of significance, for she knew, even as she listened, that he spoke but the bare truth.
Very quietly she moved away from him and stood by the chimney-piece, staring down into the grate where the embers lay dying. It seemed to typify what her life would be, shorn of the glamour with which her glorious voice had decked it. It would be as though one had plucked out the glowing heart of a fire, leaving only ashes—dead ashes of remembrance.
And in exchange for the joyous freedom of Bohemia, the happy brotherhood of artistes, there would be the deadly, daily ceremonial of a court, the petty jealousies and intrigues of a palace!
Very clearly Diana saw what the choice involved, and with that clear vision came the realisation that here was a sacrifice which she, who had so profaned love's temple, could yet make at the foot of the altar. And within her grew and deepened the certainty that no sacrifice in the world is too great to make for the sake of love, except the sacrifice of honour.
Here at last was something she could give to the man she loved. She need not go to him with empty hands. . . .
She turned again to her husband, and her eyes were radiant with the same soft shining that had lit them when he had first come to her in answer to her singing.
"Dear," she said, and her voice broke softly. "Take me with you. Oh, but you must think me very slow and stupid not to have learned—yet—what love means! . . . Ah, Max! Max! What am I to do, dear, if you won't let me go with you? What shall I do with all the love that is in my heart—if you won't take it?" For a moment she stood there tremulously smiling, while he stared at her, in his eyes a kind of bewilderment and unbelief fighting the dawn of an unutterable joy.
Then at last he understood, and his arms went round her.
"If I won't take it!" he cried, his voice all shaken with the wonder of it. "Oh, my sweet! I'll take it as a beggar takes a gift, as a blind man sight—on my knees, thanking God for it—and for you."
And so Diana came again into her kingdom, whence she had wandered outcast so many bitter months.
Presently she drew him down beside her on to a big, cushioned divan.
"Max, what a lot of time we've wasted!"
"So much, sweet, that all the rest of life we'll be making up for it."
And he kissed her on the mouth by way of a beginning.
"What will Baroni say?" she whispered, with a covert smile.
"He'll wish he was young, as we are, so that he could love—as we do," he replied triumphantly.
Diana laughed at him for an arrogant lover, then sighed at a memory she knew of.
"I think he has loved—as we do," she chided gently.
Max's arm tightened round her.
"Then he's in need of envy, beloved, for love like ours is the most wonderful thing life has to give."
They were silent a moment, and then the quick instinct of lovers told them they were no longer alone.
Baroni stood on the threshold of the room, frowning heavily.
"So!" he exclaimed, grimly addressing Max. "This, then, is how you travel in haste to Paris?"
Startled, Diana sprang to her feet, and would have drawn herself away, but Max laughed joyously, and still keeping her hand in his, led her towards Baroni.
"We travel to Paris to-morrow," he said. "Won't you—wish us luck, Baroni?"
But luck was the last thing which the old maestro was by way of wishing them. For long he argued and expostulated upon the madness, as he termed it, of Diana's renouncing her career, trying his utmost to dissuade her.
"You haf not counted the cost!" he fumed at her. "You cannot haf counted the cost!"
But Diana only smiled at him.
"Yes, I have. And I'm glad it's going to cost me something—a good deal, in fact—to go back to Max. Don't you see, Maestro, it kind of squares things the tiniest bit?" She paused, adding, after a moment: "And it's such a little price to pay—for love."
Baroni, who, after all, knew a good deal about love as well as music, regarded her a moment in silence. Then, with a characteristic shrug of his massive shoulders, he yielded.
"So, then, the most marvellous voice of the century is to be wasted reading aloud to a Grand Duchess! Ah! Dearest of all my pupils, there is no folly in all the world at once so foolish and so splendid as the folly of love."