The Duchess lifted her eyebrows as she lifted the card. "At this hour?"
"The lady says her business is important, your Grace."
"What business----?" here her eyes fell on the card, and a swift alteration of expression changed her into a different and harder woman. "Ask Mademoiselle Aksakoff to join me here," she ordered abruptly.
The sword had not yet dropped, but the hair could not suspend it much longer. Katinka was in England, in London, in her house. And Demetrius? What of him? Why had he not come also? Leah asked herself these questions with brutal directness, resolved to shirk nothing of the imminent danger. After the first dash of dismay her nerves braced themselves for the ordeal, and she advanced to greet Mademoiselle Aksakoff with a conventional smile, meaning nothing and yet everything. This gave place to an amazed look when she beheld the haggard antagonist with whom she had to cross swords.
"My--dear--girl! What have you been doing with yourself?"
She might well ask. Katinka was no longer the demure nun, but a fierce, goaded creature of the feline tribe. Dressed quietly in unrelieved black, hatted, cloaked, and gloved, she presented the appearance of one sorely tried in the fiery furnace of affliction, and less lucky than Daniel's brethren. That thin worn face, those hollow eyes, the wry mouth, the dark hair plentifully bestreaked with grey--she was demoralised, uncanny, and aggressively cruel. In a flash the Duchess knew that this untimely visitor knew the truth, and was prepared to do battle. No quarter would be given by Katinka Aksakoff, and Leah, with a deep breath, braced herself for an Armageddon duel. The contrast between the dowdy Russian girl and the magnificently arrayed woman lay entirely in the garb; otherwise they were cats of the wildest. Their faces took on a marked resemblance; a stealthy, cunning, sly, guarded expression effaced their ordinary looks. If Katinka's eyes gleamed dangerously, so did those of Leah; if Leah held herself like a pantheress about to spring, so did Katinka. In that splendid room two pre-historic creatures were about to fight over the male. Here indeed was woman, the female of man. Civilisation was nowhere.
"You know why I have come?" asked Katinka, in a voice as hard as her eyes, and those might have been fashioned of granite.
Leah, with flattened ears, so to speak, professed ignorance. She did not intend to criticise until fully aware of facts. A shake of her head conveyed the denial and brought forth one bitter word.
"Liar!"
The Duchess glanced towards the door, remembering that the servants had not yet retired and might be within earshot.
"Would you mind speaking in a lower tone?" she suggested between her teeth, for the insult struck home.
"Sit down," ordered Katinka, imperiously.
"I prefer to stand," retorted her antagonist, fighting for the inch.
Mademoiselle Aksakoff advanced one step and her eyes probed those of the Duchess. Without words the situation was adjusted, and in Leah's favour, for the Russian suddenly sat down with a quick, indrawn breath. By that action the woman who had done the wrong knew that she was the stronger of the two, and a tyrannical instinct to bully the weak rose hotly in her breast.
"What do you mean by coming at this late hour and misbehaving?" she demanded harshly.
"You know well what I mean."
"Pardon me, I never profess to understand the vagaries of a madwoman."
At this brutal speech Katinka's hand shot into her pocket, but Leah did not move.
"A weapon?" she asked sneeringly; "that would be quite in keeping with your blatant nationality. Foreigners are so fond of the melodramatic."
The girl withdrew her hand quietly. "You are too poor a creature to kill, Lady James."
Leah smiled at the old title, and passed the remark with a contemptuous shrug.
"Later on, perhaps--who knows?"
"Who indeed? It is impossible to foresee what an hysterical lunatic will do. Do you propose to shoot or stab me, or to blow me up? I understand that bombs are favoured in your happy country."
The crude hostility of the speech was plainly intended to infuriate the Slav-woman, but it missed the mark aimed at. Katinka looked at the mocker gravely.
"How afraid you are!"
Leah shrugged again; the remark was too futile to be commented upon.
"Yes, you are," went on the other, a trifle roused; "else you would have me turned out by your servants."
"Later on, perhaps--who knows?" repeated the Duchess, using the girl's own words; then continued soothingly, "No; I shall not call the servants and make a scandal, since your father is my friend."
"Your accomplice, Lady James."
"What an unpleasant word, and how very unsuitable!"
"For what you did in Paris."
"I did nothing in Paris to deserve such a word. Perhaps you mean something else. You foreigners know the grammar of English, but rarely the meaning of words. I remarked the same defect in your father."
"I have no father."
"Indeed, I have not yet heard of his death."
"Your misunderstanding of my meaning is pretence."
"Ignorance, I assure you. And as it grows late and I am tired, may I ask you to explain your business?"
"I can do so in one word--Demetrius." Katinka rose to give full force of expression to the name, and her voice rose with the utterance.
Leah remained perfectly calm, and indulged in badinage. "Demetrius? Oh yes, that horrid little man with the waxed moustache: a doctor or a chemist, wasn't he?"
"Your lover!"
"Oh no. I have no use for that sort of person; if I had I should certainly not pick one out of the gutter. Demetrius? Yes," she went on musingly, but watchful of her enemy, "I had almost forgotten him. He went to St. Petersburg, didn't he? And you loved him, I remember. A queer choice I thought at the time. Well, have you married him?"
"It grows late and you are tired," mocked Katinka, successfully keeping her temper, and thereby disappointing the Duchess; "we had better not waste time."
Leah yawned. "It seems to me that we have been doing nothing else since you came in."
"Demetrius is in England."
"Really! How very interesting! As doctor or Prince?"
"As an escaped Siberian felon."
"No!" Leah's face assumed a skilful expression of mingled pity and horror. "Poor little man! He was mad to go to Russia. I thought so when I read his letter, which I sent you."
"The forged letter."
"Don't be silly; one would think you were on the stage."
Katinka bit her lip to prevent furious speech, and locked her arms behind her as though she feared lest temper should engender violence. Leah noted her expression, however, and retreated towards the bell.
"You are talking nonsense," she said coldly, "and much as I respect your father, I shall certainly summon, the servants to put you out unless you go at once."
"I shall not go, and you shall not order your servants to put me out," cried Katinka, fiercely. "I defy you to press the button of the bell."
With a feeling that the girl had scored on this occasion Leah withdrew her hand, making the usual excuse: "For your father's sake I spare you the indignity."
"I repeat that I have no father."
"And I repeat that I am tired. What do you want?"
"You must arrange with me to see Constantine."
"Who is Constantine?"
"You know."
"I do not."
"You do."
Their eyes met, and this time Leah won the victory over a woman obviously worn out.
"Constantine is Demetrius," explained the Russian, in a fatigued voice and closing her eyes. "Oh, my God!" She dropped into her seat with a low wail and covered her face.
Leah heard the clock strike the half-hour through the sobs of her visitor. She was absolutely sure that Katinka was at her mercy, and wished to dismiss her, beaten and crushed. But first it was necessary to learn why Demetrius had not come also. Leah moved swiftly towards the broken creature, and laid a firm hand on her heaving shoulder.
"My dear----"
She got no further. With the elusive spring of a wild animal Katinka flung off the hand, reared, and struck out. The blow fell fairly on Leah's mouth, and she found herself mopping up the blood of a deeply-cut lip before she had any clear idea of what had taken place.
"Oh, you liar, you beast, you devil!" cried the Russian, with the savagery of a Kalmuck tent-woman. "I could kill you--kill you."
"Mad," mumbled Leah, with the lace handkerchief to her lips.
"I am sane," retorted the other, swiftly. "I know all. You lured Constantine to Paris; you sold him to my father to hide your iniquity. I saw Helfmann the spy; do you hear--the spy! I bribed him; it took months to bribe him, but in the end I bought the truth. My father--shame to my father--drugged Constantine at your table, and Helfmann as a sham doctor took him to Havre, to Kronstadt, to Moscow. The Grand Duke Sergius"--here she spat when mentioning the hated name--"yes, he, that beast of beasts, sent him to Siberia for life; ar-r-r--for life! do you hear, Judas, Jezebel, animal that you are! I followed there; I followed the man I loved----"
"And who did not love you," muttered the Duchess, rocking with the pain of her swollen and bleeding lips. She had seated herself by this time, and did not seek to stem the torrents of insults.
"And why?" Katinka flung back her head and her nostrils dilated. "Because you stole his heart that he might do your evil bidding. But he loves me now--with all his heart and soul he loves me now. I went to Tomsk to aid his escape; I followed to Sakhalin. I waited and waited, eating my heart out. Oh, my heart!" she laid her hand on her breast; "oh, my breaking heart! We escaped--he did--I did; we escaped. Do you hear, you who sold him? There were months of terror and sorrow and cruel cold. But God was good; He was kinder than man, more merciful than you, who damned a soul to that frozen hell. God--the good God, whom I adore and worship," she fell on her knees, striking her hands together--"He aided us to reach the waiting ship of Strange, and----"
"Strange!" Leah rose, shaken and sick. "Strange!"
Katinka leaped up to face her. "The man you bribed with six thousand pounds to take your sin on his soul. I know all about your wickedness; Strange knows; Constantine knows. We will tell the world what we know; and you, shamed, disgraced, beaten, hounded out of your world--ah, down will you fall--fall--unless----"
"Unless?" Leah, gripping a chair and swaying, looked up. "Unless?"
"You come to Southend to see Constantine."
"I refuse."
"Then I tell everything. I go to your husband." Leah, in spite of her pain, laughed at the idea. "I go to your police. I tell----"
"Stop, I shall come, since you insist upon it."
"I do--Constantine likewise. He is ill--very ill; his eyes are blinded by the glare of the snows whither you sent him; he is--oh, my poor angel, my patient saint!--he is----" Stopping abruptly, she looked with an evil eye at the woman she had so shamefully marked. "I will leave you to see the wreck you have made of him. You will come?"
The Duchess nodded. "But I can explain all," she mumbled.
"Explain it, then, to Constantine," said her enemy, contemptuously. "I go now. Meet me to-morrow at Liverpool Street Station--at the barrier. We can go to Southend by the five o'clock train. Constantine is on board Strange's ship, which lies off Southend."
"Ah! Then you mean to----"
"Carry you away? No; you are not worth it."
Leah's indomitable courage, quelled for the moment, blazed up fiercely. She forgot her pain, her disfigured mouth, and faced Katinka in a blind rage. "You--you----" she clenched her hands, and panted like a spent runner. "You have said all; I agree to all."
The Russian looked at the wounded mouth with a cruel, calm smile, then sauntered deliberately to the door. There she smiled still more serenely, pointed a mocking finger at her enemy's wry mouth, and slipped away without a word, and almost without a sound.
Leah sprang to the mirror. Had this woman marred her beauty? The mouth was swollen, the lips still bleeding; there were wounds within and without, and a rather loose tooth. Leah could have howled aloud at the shame, the humiliation of her defeat. That she should be struck, beaten, mastered--she of all women; she--she! "Ar-r-r! Augh!" she cried, but softly, mindful of danger. Then the thought came to her that she would have to account for her damaged mouth, and with the thought came enlightenment. Passing quickly out of the room, she ascended the stairs rapidly to her room. Half-way up she stumbled and fell. The footman, hearing the fall, ran up and lifted her. He saw that her mouth was bleeding. Natural enough--oh, perfectly natural! "It's them beastly long trains," explained the footman in the servants' hall.
"Never knew you to tumble before, Leah," grumbled the Duke, next morning, when admitted into his wife's bedroom.
"Accidents will happen," murmured the Duchess, rather lamely, and too much shaken to be original. "I can't talk, Jim--my mouth is still sore."
"What can you expect if you go a mucker? An' th' season's startin', too. You'll not be able to show with that swellin'."
"A week at Firmingham will put me right. Katinka Aksakoff is coming down also."
"Heard she looked in last night. What made her call at so late an hour?"
"She's worried about her father," lied Leah, prepared for the question.
"Had an almighty row with him over that bounder doctor, I expect."
Leah nodded languidly. "M. Aksakoff has gone to Southend. I take his daughter with me there, to make peace."
"Southend? There's a hole! What's he doin' in that roost?"
"How should I know? I'll reconcile the two if I can, and Katinka can be my companion at Firmingham."
"Dull company," confessed Jim, candidly; "she never could flirt."
"That will be no drawback," said his wife, dryly. "Go away, please."
"What lie am I to tell 'bout your sickness?"
"Tell the truth, by way of a novelty; or if you prefer a lie, say that I have appendicitis. One must be fashionable, even in diseases."
"All right," said Jim, too obtuse to note the irony. "Sorry you're so ill. You've made an awf'l mess of yourself: women will wear such confounded trains. Goo'bye at present. I'll look in at Firmingham durin' your week of penance;" and, talking himself out of the room, Jim went about his ordinary nefarious occupations, feeling that he had behaved as a husband should.
The Duchess turned wearily on her pillows and winced. Not with pain, for her mouth, though still swollen, was much less tender. It was the prospect before her that hurt. In the evening a difficult interview had to be got through somehow, and her brain began to forecast the probable result. If Katinka could be believed it would scarcely prove to be a pleasant one. Demetrius apparently intended to punish her by blackening an unsoiled character. "Such a nasty, revengeful spirit," thought Leah, feeling ill-used and depressed.
But, after all, what could the man say likely to incriminate her, seeing that she had moved amongst the pitfalls of the plot as delicately as Agag? Demetrius had conceived and executed the entire scheme, and what he could say would only fit in neatly with Strange's confession, which the public already knew and condemned. Her hand could not be traced either in his Parisian journey or in the drugging of the tea. How was she to know that Helfmann was a police spy, or that the letter assuring her of the doctor's intended return to Russia had been deftly forged? Her surface behaviour, at least, was perfectly honest, and would bear even the scrutiny of an interviewer. She could, taking a broad view of unpleasant circumstances, defy the creature; but nevertheless felt instinctively that it would be unwise to dare him to do his worst. Such a plotting, narrow-minded, sneaking beast would ruin himself to ruin her, and mud, if thrown persistently, was apt to stick even to the whitest robe. What a shame that this animal should so persecute her! How hard on a kind-hearted woman, whose sin, as he called it, was merely an error of judgment. By the time Leah finished her reflections her frame of mind was one of much-injured innocence.
Later in the day, when driving to Liverpool Street Station to keep her hated appointment, Leah half decided to call on Aksakoff. But second thoughts assured her that his intervention was quite out of the question. Were Demetrius to be arrested in British waters the Radical press would howl, and nasty meddling politicians would ask unnecessary questions in the Commons. It would be wiser, after all, to fight alone and to the bitter end. If Demetrius thought she would give in, Demetrius was entirely mistaken. He had yet to learn that she could be as nasty as hitherto she had been nice. But he was horridly ungrateful, as all men were. In this way did the arch-plotter salve her conscience and compose her mind.
It was darkish when the brougham arrived at the station, and Leah, glancing about under the electric lamps, saw Katinka waiting at the ticket-barrier. For the benefit of an inquisitive maid and an observant groom she addressed her gaily, though it was not easy to speak with still aching lips.
"Youarepunctual," said the Duchess, pressing an unwilling hand with ostentatious warmth. "Excuse my speaking much. I fell on the stairs last night after you left and hurt my mouth."
"I commiserate with you, madame," replied Katinka, sarcastically.
"So good of you. I hope M. Aksakoff will not expect me to chatter."
"My father?" echoed the girl, staring.
"He's at Southend, isn't he?" said Leah, impatiently; "at least, you told me so last night. I have instructed my maid to go on to Firmingham, while we travel straight to Southend. Such a cockney place, isn't it? Then we can get back--oh, about what time?"
"Say eleven o'clock," returned the Russian, grimly. She now saw through the clever comedy which was being played.
"You understand, Marie," said Leah, turning to her maid, who was all ears and eyes; "see that the brougham is sent in time. Come with me, dear--there's a reserved compartment--at least, I ordered one. Curl, go and look."
Thus prattling to deceive her domestics, Leah adjusted a very thick veil, which hid from the public a face whose expression was quite at variance with her sweet nothings. When the two entered the carriage and the train was moving slowly out of the station, Katinka burst into a harsh laugh.
"I congratulate you, Lady James; you should have been a conspirator."
"So your dear father told me. Compliments run in your family, apparently. Surely you do not blame me for putting things right with my servants. They might think it queer, otherwise, and one cannot be too careful with such creatures."
"I fail to see what good your exceedingly clever explanations will do. Constantine intends to speak out."
"What about?" asked Leah, chafing, and throwing up her veil to manage the girl more easily with her dominating eyes.
Katinka, always fiery, and with slack nerves after her Siberian experiences, almost lost what temper she had left. "Need we keep on your comedy, madame?"
"I'm sure I do not know what you mean. One would think that I wished to deceive people, the way you talk. And after what I have done for you, too--it's most ungrateful."
"And pray what have you done, Lady James?"
"Don't call me Lady James; your stupid mistakes get on my nerves. Done? Why, I pretended to fall on the stair to excuse the state of my mouth. Had I been a nasty, spiteful creature such as you are, I should have given you in charge for assault."
"Give me in charge now," sneered the girl.
"I might. Don't drive me into a corner."
"You are inconsistent. If you have done nothing wrong, how can I drive you into the corner you speak of?"
"Because you are a monomaniac," retorted the Duchess, angrily; "you seem to think that I am the cause of the doctor's exile. I, of all people, who would not hurt a fly."
"You would hurt a dozen flies if anything was to be gained," snapped the other, irritably. "You betrayed my Constantine."
"I did nothing of the sort, as he will understand when he hears what I have to say."
"Hearing and believing are two different things, Lady James."
Leah shrugged away the speech. "Of course, you are prejudiced, because Demetrius loves me."
Mademoiselle Aksakoff fetched a long, deep breath. "Do not try me too far."
"Do you intend to assault me again?"
"No; I even apologise for the blow. I told Constantine this morning of my interview, and he said that I was wrong. It is for him to deal you justice and punishment."
"Punishment! Justice!" Leah laughed aloud in sheer rage at her inability to parry these insults. "And for what, pray?"
"Constantine will tell you."
"In that case I do not wish a second-hand judgment from you."
The two glared at one another, venomous and defiant. As usual, the younger woman's eyes fell first, and she retreated to the furthermost corner of the carriage, while Leah, pulling down her veil, tried to face this most disagreeable situation. Not another word did they exchange until the ducal servants branched off at Shenfield Junction, and they had to be publicly amiable. Then, again, silence reigned until their destination was reached. By that time Leah was more her old insolent self, and disposed to be unpleasant.
"Will yon drive or walk?" asked Katinka, coldly, when they alighted on the Southend platform.
"Walk, of course. I do not mind at all being recognised, since I have come to see your father on board this yacht."
"Captain Strange would be flattered by your description."
The Duchess laughed contemptuously as they stepped into the street. "I am scarcely responsible for M. Aksakoff's notion of a yacht. Foreigners are so ignorant."