LI
He ceased, for a sudden burning wave of color flooded her to the temples. Her white throat and bosom were tinged with the red stain.
He bit his lip in chagrin, seeing her recoil from him. Fair women were not wont to turn their eyes from Dunoisse. He began, in much less confident tones, to exonerate himself:
“In the world of to-day, Mademoiselle, especially the world of Paris, one is compelled to abandon high ideals of life and forsake the more rigid standards of conduct. One is forced....”
She looked at him full, and the scathing, merciless contemptin her great eyes both froze and scorched him. He stammered, bungled, broke down. The clear voice said with a cutting edge of irony:
“The boy of whom my dear old friend, Miss Caroline Smithwick, spoke with so much affection; the young man of whom she was so proud, was not to be ‘compelled’ or ‘forced’ to turn from the path of truth and honor by any stress of circumstances. You have changed very much, Colonel Dunoisse, since you visited her in Cavendish Street! Good-night to you, and good-by!”
The tall, white-robed figure was sweeping to the door, when it stopped, and turned, and came back again. She said, with almost a pleading look:
“But I cannot leave you so, remembering how true and kind you were toher. My fault is to be over hasty in judgment, I fear.” She added: “There must be many excuses that you could make for yourself, and are too proud and too reserved to offer.... Especially to one who has no claim upon your confidence; so let us part friends, even though we never meet as friends again!”
He took the white, firm hand she held out. He had thought her insular and prejudiced, narrow-minded and intolerant. Some magic in her touch wrought a change in him. He said in a far different tone:
“That I have sinned against your ideals of character and principle is my punishment. Tell me—Miss Merling—if I had been the kind of man you thought me—if I had come back to Cavendish Street and sought your friendship—would it have been denied?”
“No!” she said, looking in his face with beautiful candor. “For I saw much to admire and to respect in you—as you were in days gone by.”
“The world dubbed me, very plainly—a fool for being what I was in those days,” returned Dunoisse, with a slight deprecatory lift of shoulders and eyebrows. “And frankly, Mademoiselle, I had not the courage requisite to go against the world.”
“If you were a fool, you were God’s fool,” she answered him, “and such folly is superior to the wisdom of the sages. Now, good-by, Colonel Dunoisse.”
And, with a slight inclination of the head, she withdrew her hand and moved away, as the farther door of the library opened, admitting Madame Walewski, her homelinesspainfully accentuated by her dazzling dress of gold brocade and famousparureof Brazilian emeralds; and another lady, dark-haired, sweet-faced, and of middle height, dressed in half-mourning, towards whom Ada Merling hurried, saying in a tremulous whisper as she caught the outstretched hand:
“Oh, Mary, come!....”
And then the three ladies were gone, retreating by that farther door into unknown, conjectural regions; and the velvet curtain lifted and dropped behind Dunoisse, and he turned, instinctively drawing the Prince’s letter from his breast, to meet the radiant blue eyes and graceful, cordial greeting of Count Walewski, and to be presented to the Ambassador’s companion, Lord Walmerston....
You saw the all-powerful Foreign Minister as a hale, vigorous, elderly gentleman, displaying a star, and the broad red ribbon and oval gold badge of a Civil G.C.B., and the befrogged and gold-laced swallow-tail of official ceremony rather awkwardly, upon a heavy-shouldered, somewhat clumsy figure, though the black silk stockings showed well-made legs, and gold-buckled, patent-leather shoes set off the small, neat feet.
Little enough remained at this period of the dandified elegance that had won repute at Almack’s in 1820, and the grace that had made him famous in the waltz. The weather-beaten face, surrounded by pepper-and-salt hair and whiskers, the square-ended, sagacious nose and flexible, curving lips, might have belonged to a shrewd, humorous, Northern farmer rather than a brilliant statesman; while the jerky manner, the odd gesticulations that accompanied the hesitating, drawling speech, made the stranger to whom it was addressed ask himself in wonder whether this could really be the great orator, the dazzling politician, the famous diplomat who had steered England’s ship of State through so many troubled foreign seas? until the keen, dark, glittering eyes met and held his own; and under the merciless, piercing scrutiny of their regard the querist ceased to question, and the critic found himself appraised, weighed, judged, and valued by a mind without its parallel in the science of reading men.
One phrase employed by him was to linger in Dunoisse’s memory. He said, as Walewski handed him the letterfrom the Élysée, and he wiped his tortoiseshell-rimmed eyeglasses to read:
“You herald the event after its occurrence, Colonel.”
And a moment later, folding up the sheet and returning it:
“His Imperial Highness certainly owes less to a fortuitous concourse of atoms than to his own ability, energy, and tact.” He added with emphasis: “This is an immense act; its importance can hardly be overestimated. For my part, I officially recognize it, and shall adhere to my determination to support it.”
Then, as Walewski, flushed with a triumph he could hardly control, murmured a gracefully-worded, low-toned entreaty, he responded:
“Ah! I understand. You wish me to write a line to His Imperial Highness, recapitulating what I have just said, to be conveyed with your own loyal congratulations by his messenger?...”
Walewski, unable to trust himself to speak, bowed assent. Perhaps the hand that held the tortoiseshell-rimmed eyeglasses knew a moment of unsteadiness as its owner’s swift brain balanced the question of risks. Then, with characteristic boldness, my lord took the leap.
“Certainly, my dear Count—certainly. I see no objection at all!”
And, with a slight jerky nod of dismissal for Dunoisse, accompanied by a not unkindly glance of the hard, powerful, dark brown eyes, the stooping figure of England’s great Foreign Minister moved forwards to the writing-table and penned the single, brief, emphatic line of approval, that burned the writer’s boats and brought about the downfall from which he was to rise, with popularity enhanced and power redoubled, within the space of a year.
An hour or so of fevered sleep in a luxurious bedroom, ringing with the clatter of late cabs and early milk-carts upon London paving-stones, and Dunoisse was on the iron road again. As he leaned back, with folded arms, in the first-class compartment that had no other passenger, his imagination followed Ada Merling back to the Hospice in Cavendish Street. But it was to a house in Park Lane that swiftly-trotting hoofs and rapidly-rolling wheels had carried her when she had left the Embassy on the night before.