L
Dunoisse, roused by the unmistakable double ring of a telegraphic messenger, started to his feet. The undelivered letter in his breast seemed to burn there like red-hot iron. His keen ears pricked themselves for what he knew must come, if this were as he suspected, a cable from Paris.
He stepped towards the door, put aside the velvet draperies of theportière, and turned the handle. He emerged upon the landing, where a few persons were gathered, conferring eagerly in undertones. He moved to the balustrade of the great well-staircase, and looked down into the flower-decked, brilliantly illuminated hall, to find it packed with a solid mass of heads of both sexes, all ages, and every shade of color. Bald craniums of venerable diplomats nodded beside the more amply thatched heads of middle-age politicians or the hyacinthine curls of juvenileGuardsmen; tiaras of diamonds crowning snow-white or chestnut, sable or golden locks, blazed and coruscated, wreaths of flowers twined in Beauty’s tresses made a garden for the eye. And all these heads, it seemed to Dunoisse, were turned towards the full-length portrait of Monseigneur, attired in the uniform of a General of the French Army, smiling with his imperturbable amiability above the marble fireplace.
For what were they all waiting? Leaning over the balustrade above, Dunoisse could see that a small round ventilator in the wall immediately above the picture, and hidden from the persons assembled in the hall below by the bespangled canopy, was open. Through the aperture came a hand holding a lighted taper; and in another moment, with a faint hissing sound, the initial N and an Imperial crown above it leaped into lines of vivid wavering flame.
Babel broke loose then. Questions, ejaculations, comments, explanations, congratulations, in half-a-dozen European languages, crossed and recrossed in the air like bursting squibs. And seeing officials and attachés of the Embassy beset by eager questions; and conscious that curious glances from below were raking his own dark, unfamiliar features, Dunoisse, as a wave of excited humanity began to roll up the grand staircase, retreated to the library, knowing that thecoup d’Étatwas an accomplished fact.
He had left the library empty, but he found it occupied. A lady and a gentleman had entered by a door at the more distant end. The lady’s back was towards Dunoisse. Her male companion, a tall and handsome man of barely middle age, wearing the gold-embroidered uniform of the diplomatic corps with grace and distinction, said to her, in the act of quitting the room:
“Wait here. I will go and order the carriage, but the crush is so great that some delay is unavoidable. Mary shall come and keep you company. By that small private staircase communicating with the dining-room she can join you quite quietly and unobserved. No one will be likely to disturb you. M. Walewski will not be able to escape from the congratulations of his circle for a considerable interval, and Madame Walewski is engaged with the Duke.”
The speaker withdrew by the more distant door, softlyclosing it behind him. And Dunoisse stood still in the shadow of a massive writing-table, flung by the light of fire and candle upon the heavy velvet curtain behind him, uncertain whether to remain or to retreat. One moment more; and then, as the tall, slender, white-robed figure of the lady turned and moved towards him across the richly hued Oriental carpets, a memory, faint as a whiff of sweetness from some jar of ancient pot-pourri, wakened in him, quickening as she drew nearer into fragrance fresh and as living as that exhaled by the bouquet of pure white roses clustering in their glossy dark green leaves, that she carried in her slight gloved hand; and by their fellow-blossoms, drooping in the graceful fashion of the day, amidst the heavy shining coils of her rippling gold-brown hair.
For it was Ada Merling.
He drew noiselessly back into the shadow, looking at her intently. A dress of costly fabric, frost-flowers of Alençon lace wrought upon cloudy tulle, billowed and floated about her slender, rounded form. Glimpses of shimmering sea-blue showed through the exquisite folds. The moony glimmer of great pearls, and the cold white fire of diamonds crowned her rich hair and clasped her fair throat, circled her slight wrists, and heaved on her white bosom. Jewels and laces could not add to her beauty in the eyes of those who loved her. To Dunoisse the revelation of the loveliness that had been gowned in Quaker gray, crowned with the frilled cap of the nurse, and uniformed with the bibbed apron, came with a shock that took his breath away.
She had not seen him, standing by the curtain. She evidently believed herself alone when she dropped her fan and bouquet on a divan, as though their inconsiderable burden had oppressed her, and moved towards the fireplace. She looked steadfastly at the replica of the David portrait of the Great Napoleon that hung above. Her name was upon Dunoisse’s lips, when the sound of the unforgotten voice of melody arrested it. She spoke; and her words were addressed, not to the living man who heard, but to the deaf, unheeding dead.
“Oh, you with the inscrutable pale face and the cold, hard, pitiless eyes! who point forwards ceaselessly,” shesaid, “scourging your dying soldiers along the road of Death with the whip of your remorseless, merciless will, do you know whathehas done, and is doing?—the man who bears your name, and would, if he could, revive the withered glories of your Empire by dipping them in a bath of human blood.... Do you hear the shrieks, and groans, and prayers for mercy? Do you see the red tide running in the streets of Paris? Do you see the people butchered at the police-bureau and guard-houses? And seeing, do you own the slayer as a son of your House?... I cannot believe that you and he have anything in common.... You were a magnificent despot, a royal tiger, but this man is——”
“Mademoiselle!” broke from Dunoisse, as with a most painfully-embarrassing consciousness upon him that his unsuspected presence should in decency have been made known to her ere now, he moved from the shadow of the doorway.
“Who is it?”
She turned her face to him, and it was pale and agitated, and there were tragic violet circles round the great brilliant blue-gray eyes. They recognized Dunoisse, and she held out her hand in the frank way that he remembered, and he took it in his own.
“Monsieur Dunoisse!... Colonel Dunoisse I should say now, should I not?”
“I thank you,” he said, “for not completely forgetting me; otherwise, I hardly know how I should have recalled myself to you.”
“Why so? You have not changed,” she answered, looking in the dark keen face. And then, as the light of fire and candles showed the fine lines graven about its eyes and mouth, and the sprinkling of gray hairs upon the high, finely modeled temples, she added: “And yet I think you have.”
“Time is only kind to beautiful women!” Dunoisse responded, paying her the implied compliment with the gallantry that had become habitual. But she answered with a contraction of the brows:
“Time would be kind if this December day, that dawned upon the betrayal of the French Republic, and set upon the massacre and slaughter of her citizens, could be wiped from the calendar forever.”
Tears sprang to her eyes and fell, and her bosom heaved under the jewels that sparkled on its whiteness.
“One should never consent to act against one’s own innate convictions, even to gratify the dearest living friends,” she said. “My mother, the kindest and most unselfish of women, has never ceased to regard my chosen work as a kind of voluntary martyrdom; my duties at the Home, absorbing and delightful as they are, as irksome and unpleasant. ‘If Ada would go out into Society sometimes,’ she says constantly, ‘it would be more natural!’ And so, to please the dear one—who has been, and still is, very ill, and whom I have been nursing—I accepted their Excellencies’ invitation, left her sick-bed, put on my fallals and trinkets—and came here withMr.and Mrs. Bertham to-night—to join, although I did not know it, in celebrating the perpetration of a crime, and hailing as a great and memorable stroke of statecraft a deed of infamy.”
The letter in Dunoisse’s breast became an oppressive burden. His eyes fell under hers. She pursued, with a deepening, intensifying expression and tone of horror and repulsion.
“For that the banquet in which I shared to-night was intended to celebrate this day that has seen the triumph of bad faith and mean deceit, and hideous treachery, over generous confidence and open trust, can be doubted by no one!... And while we ate and drank, and laughed and chatted, sitting at the table ofhisplenipotentiary, what horrors were taking place in Paris! what crimes were being committed against Law, against Honor, against Humanity, against God!...”
Her voice broke. Innumerable little shining points of moisture started into sight upon her broad, pure forehead, and in the shadow of the silken waves upon her blue-veined temples, and about her pale, quivering lips. She said, lifting her lace handkerchief and wiping the moisture away:
“I speak thus to you, who are an officer of the Army of France; who hold a post of confidence—or so I have been given to understand—on the Prince’s Military Staff. It may be that you prize Success above Integrity, that the result of thecoup d’Étatwill justify in your eyes the measures that have been taken to carry it out. But, knowing what I know of you—having heard from that dearlady,—who is now, I earnestly believe, crowned in a more glorious life than that of earth, with the reward of her pure faith and simple virtues,—the story of your renunciation of great fortune and high prospects for the sake of principle and honor—I cannot believe this. If it were so, you would be changed, not only in outward appearance, but in mind, and heart, and soul.”
She added, with an almost wistful smile:
“And I do not wish to find you so. I prefer, when it is possible, to keep my ideals intact.”
“Miss Merling,” returned Dunoisse, “I break no bond of secrecy in saying to you that thecoup d’Étathas long been expected, both by the enemies and the friends of Monseigneur the Prince-President. But although the most minute preparations have been made to insure perfection in the military operations and the proceedings of the police; the friends most depended on by His Highness—the agents most necessary to the execution of his plan—have had no knowledge of what was to be their share in the programme until the moment for action arrived. The Prince, M. de Morny, M. deSt.Arnaud, M. de Persigny, Colonel de Fleury, and M. de Maupas, alone shared the secret. And they have kept it well!”
“Too well!” she said, and her arched brows drew into straight lines of condemnation over the severity of her clear gaze. “One would have prayed for less perfection! The plot has been a masterpiece of cool Machiavellian treachery, devised with extraordinary genius, and carried out with consummate skill. It is hinted that Lord Walmerston approves and encourages, if he has not aided and abetted.”.... A shudder rippled through her slight body. “Oh, I knew him subtle as Odysseus,” she said, with starting tears of indignation—“but I never believed him guileful; never imagined that he could justify God-defying, cold-blooded murder as a means to an end. If this indeed be so, those who have termed him England’s typical and representative Englishman”—the tone was of keen, cutting sarcasm—“must find him another description. Hell’s typical and representative devil”—Dunoisse started as the fierce condemnatory sentence rang through the room—“is he whom you call master! The jailer who has turned the key upon the freedom of the people of France!”
“Miss Merling, the ways of Government and Rule are bestrewn with obstacles and beset with pearls,” returned Dunoisse, “and Expediency demands many moral sacrifices on the part of those who sit on the coach-boxes of the world. As a man of honor”—the well-used word fell lightly from his lips as he slightly shrugged his shoulders—“I deplore that they should be necessary! But in the years that have passed since it was my privilege to meet you, I have learned to swim with the stream; to take Life as I find it; and not to ask a greater excess of nobility and virtue from my neighbors than I possess in myself.”
His slight momentary embarrassment had passed away. He had recovered his customary ease and sangfroid, and the acquired manner of his world, self-confident, almost insolent in its cool assurance, lent its meretricious charm to the handsome face and upright gallant figure as he faced her smiling, the ruddy firelight enhancing the brilliancy of his black eyes and the ruddy swarthiness of hue that distinguished him, his supple, well-shaped hand toying with a fine waxed end of the neat black mustache.
“Nothing, Mademoiselle,” he went on, “would distress me more profoundly than to think that credit was given me for opinions I have long learned to regard as prejudiced and crude, and a course of conduct subsequent experience has proved to have been so mistaken that I have long since endeavored to correct its errors by adopting an opposite policy. I——”