It was the month of September, and the little town of Baden was full. It is now the big town of Baden, and is still, during its season, filled to overflowing; but the company is by no means so select, so pleasant, so agreeable as it used to be. Thevor-eisenbahnBaden was as superior to the present excursionists' resort as was the ante-railway Ascot Meeting to what now is merely a succession of Derby-days in Bucks. Then, when you posted in from Strasburg, or arrived in theeilwagen, from deadly-lively Carlsruhe, you found Mr. Rheinboldt, the landlord of the Badischer Hof, attended by the stoutest, the best-tempered, and the stupidest even of German porters, coming forward to meet you with the pleasantest of greetings. You had written on beforehand if you were a wise man, and your old room was ready--one of that little row of snug dormitories set apart for bachelors, and looking on to the trim garden. You had a wash, with more water than you had met with since you left home (they were beginning to understand the English mania for soap-and-water at the Badischer Hof even so long ago), and you made your toilette and came down to the five-o'clocktable-d'hôte, where you found most of the people who had been there the previous season, and many of their friends whom they had induced to come. Most of the people knew each other or of each other, and there was a sociability among them which the railway has utterly annihilated. Now London sends her bagmen and Paris herlorettes; but in those days, if "our Mr. Johnson" got as far as Parry by way of Cally or Bolong, he was looked upon as an intrepid voyager, while very few Parisian ladies, save those of the best class, came into the Grand Duke's territory.
It was hot in England in that September, but it was hotter at Baden. With the earliest dawn came thick vapours rolling down from the Black Forest, encompassing the little town with a white and misty shroud, which invariably presaged a sultry day, and invariably kept its promise. All day long the big red-faced sun glared down upon the denizens of the pleasantest corner of Vanity Fair; glared in the early morning upon the water-drinkers sipping the nauseous fluid in the thick and heavy glass tumblers, and tendering their kreutzers to the attendant maidens at the Brunnen; glared upon them as they took the prescribed constitutional walk, and returned to the hotel to breakfast; glared upon the fevered gamblers, who, with last night's excitement only half slept off, with bleared eyes and shaking hands and parched throats, took their places round the gaming-table as the clock struck noon, and eyed the stolid-faced croupiers as intently as though the chances of the game were to be gleamed from a perusal of their fishy eyes or pursed mouths. The revellers who were starting off for picnics to the Black Forest, or excursions to the Favourite or Eberstein-Schloss, glanced up with terror at the scorching red ball in the sky, and bade courteous Mr. Rheinboldt, the landlord of the Badischer Hof, to see that plenty of ice was packed with the sparkling Moselle, and to let Karl and Fritz take care that an unlimited supply of umbrellas was placed in the carriage. The Englishmen, whom M. Benazet, the proprietor of the gaming-tables, grateful for their patronage, had provided with shooting, or who had received invitations to thetriebjagdof some neighbouring landowner, looked with comic wonder, not unmixed with horror, at the green jerkins, fantastic game-bags, couteaux de chasse or hunting-knives (worn in the belt), and general appearance of their foreign friends; and then when lunch-time arrived, and they saw each German eating his own sausage and drinking from his own particular flask, which he never dreamed of passing, they recollected with dismay the luncheons at similar parties in England, the snowy cloth laid under the shade of the hedge, the luscious game-pie, the cooling claret-cup, the glancing eyes and natty ankles of those who had accompanied the luncheon. Hot! It was no word for it. It was blazing, tearing, drying, baking, scorching heat, and it was hotter at Baden than anywhere else.
So they said at least, and as they were from almost every part of the civilized world, they ought to have known. There were English people, swells, peers and peeresses, bankers and bankeresses, a neat little legal set,--Sir Nisey and Lady Prious, Mr. Tocsin, Q.C., Mr. Serjeant Stentor, and some of the junior members of the bar,--a select assortment of the Stock-Exchange, and some eligible young men from the West-end government offices. There were joyous Russians, whose names all ended in "vitch" and "gorod," and were otherwise utterly unpronounceable, who spoke all European languages with equal fluency and facility, and who put down rouleaux of Napoleons on the roulette-table where other people staked thalers or florins. There were a few Frenchmen and French ladies; here was an Austrian gross-herzog or grand-duke, there some Prussian cavalry subalterns who could not play at the table because they had spent the half-crown of their daily allowance in roast veal, Bairisch beer, and a horrible compound called "grogs an rhum," which they drank at night, "after," as they said to themselves, "the English fashion."
It had been hotter than ever during the day, but the day was happily past and over, and the moon was streaming on the broad gravelled Platz in front of the Conversationshaus, and the band, stationed in the little oil-lamp-illumined kiosk, were rattling away at Strauss's waltzes and Labitskey's galops. The gamblers were already thronging therouletteandtrente-et-quarantetables; and of the non-gamblers all such as had ladies with them were promenading and listening to the music, while the others were seated, drinking and smoking. It was a splendid evening; the diners at the latetables-d'hôtewere wending their way from their hotels to the promenade; the consumers of the Germanmittagsessen, were listening to the band in delicious anticipation of thereh-bratenand theharing-saladand thebok-bier, or the Ahrbleichart, at which another half-hour would see them hard at work; the clamouring for coffee was incessant, and the head-waiter, Joseph, who was so like Bouffé, was almost driven out of his wits by the Babel of voices. They chattered, those tall occupants of the little wooden round-tables--how they chattered! They turned round and stared at the promenaders, and made their comments on them after they had passed. They had something to say, some remark, either complimentary or disparaging, to make upon all the ladies. But there was only one man who seemed to attract any special attention, and that was the Russian Prince Tchernigow.
A man of middle height, with brown-black hair, a perfectly bloodless complexion, stern deeply sunken eyes, a stiff moustache bristling over a determined mouth. A man with small hands and feet, and apparently but little muscular development, but strong, brave, and vindictive. A man whose face Lavater might have studied for months without getting beyond the merest rudiments of his science--impassive, unaltering, statuesque. He never played but with rouleaux of napoleons--twenty in a rouleau; and though the space in front of him was shining with gold at one moment, or laid bare by the sweeping rake of the croupier,--winning or losing, his expression would not change for an instant. He had been to Baden for two or three seasons running, and was beginning to be looked upon as anhabitué; the croupiers acknowledged his taking his seat, intending to do battle, by a slight grave bow; he had broken the bank more than once, and was a lion among the visitors, and notably amongst the English. Tchernigow's horses and carriages, his bold play, his good shooting, the wonderful way in which he spoke our language, his love of solitude, his taciturnity, his singular physique, were all freely discussed at the latetables-d'hôteof hotels at which the prince was not staving. His reputation ofbeau joueurcaused him to be followed as soon as he was seen going into the rooms, and his play was watched and humbly imitated by scores. He seldom attended the balls, and very rarely danced, though he valsed to perfection; and all the women in the room were eager for his selection. His appearance on the promenade always excited attention, but he never gave the smallest sign of having observed it.
Among those who looked up as Prince Tchernigow passed was Lord Dollamore, who was seated at one of the tables, with no companion save his invariable one--his stick. Dollamore generally came to Baden every year. The place amused him; it was a grand field for the display of the worst passions of human nature,--a study which always afforded him infinite delight. He never played, but he was constantly hovering round the tables; and there was scarcely an incident which happened in the seething crowd, scarcely a change which swept across the faces of the leading actors, that passed unnoticed by him. He did not dance; he would have been prevented by his lameness from indulging in such a pastime, even had his taste impelled him to it; but he was a constant attendant at the balls which M. Benazet provided for the amusement of his patrons; and looking on at the actual life before him as he might have looked on the mimic life of a theatrical representation, he had innumerable conferences with his stick on all he saw and heard, and on the arguments which he deduced therefrom. He immensely enjoyed being seated, as he was then, in the calm autumnal moonlit evening, with a cup of excellent coffee by his side, a cigar in his mouth, and the ever-shifting panorama of human faces passing before him.
"That Tchernigow is really delicious!" he said to himself--or to his stick--as he looked after the Russian, and marked the excitement which he created; "there's a savage insolence about him which is positively refreshing in these days of bowing and scraping and preposterous politeness. How they chatter, and gape, and nudge each other with their elbows about him! and what a supreme indifference he affects to it all! Affects? Yes,mon prince, it is accepted as the real thing by these good people, but we are not to be taken in by veneer,nous autres!It would require a very small scratch indeed to pick off the Petersburg-cum-Paris polish, and to arrive at the genuine Calmuck substratum. Only to look at you to tell that Nature's handwriting never lies; and if ever there were a more delightfully truculent, ruffianly, bloodthirsty savage than yourself,mon prince, I am very much out in my ideas. God help the woman on whom you ever get a legitimate hold! Ah, that reminds me--what has become of the widow? There is no doubt that Tchernigow was badly hit in London. The only man received at her house, the only man permitted to assuage her grief, to wipe away those tears which doubtless flowed so constantly for poor Percy Hammond! What an audacious little devil it is! How pluckily she fought that business of guardianship to the child; and how gracefully she retired from the contest when she saw that she had no chance, and that defeat was inevitable! She's the cleverest woman, in a certain way, that I've ever met with; and I'd take my oath she's playing some long-headed, far-sighted game now, and that Tchernigow is the stake. No more flirtation and coquetry--for the present--les eaux sont bases; the widow is hard up, and means torecoupherself by a rich marriage. That's why that infatuated cad Mitford was snubbed so severely. I think she comprehends that Tchernigow will stand no nonsense, and as he is thepartiat present in view, his will is law. She can't have given up the chase; but how on earth is she working it?"
A smart natty-looking little man in evening-dress, with smoothly-brushed hair and elaborately-trimmed whiskers, faint pink coral studs, little jean boots with glazed tips, irreproachable gloves, and a Gibus hat--a little man who looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox--stopped at Lord Dollamore's table, and with a bow, half-deferential, half-familiar, glided into the vacant chair.
"Ah, how do you do, Mr. Aldermaston?" said Lord Dollamore, looking up,--"how do you do? and what is the latest news in this Inferno?"
Every one who knew Mr. Aldermaston made a point of asking him the news, well knowing that they could apply to no better source for the latest gossip and tittle-tattle. Mr. Aldermaston nominally was private secretary to Lord Waterhouse, the First Commissioner at the Inland, Irrigation Office, and he had been selected for that onerous post for his distinguished personal appearance and his obsequious toadyism. It was not a situation involving a great deal of work, though any one noticing the regularity with which a large leather despatch-box, bearing a gilt crown, and "Charles Aldermaston, Esq., P.S., I.I.O.," was deposited for him by an official messenger in the hall of the Alfred Club, might have thought otherwise. The inferior portion of the duty was performed by a clerk, and Mr. Aldermaston contented himself with taking Lord Waterhouse's signature to a few papers occasionally, and receiving a select few of the most distinguished persons who wished for personal interviews. This left him plenty of leisure to pursue his more amusing occupation of purveyor of gossip and inventor and retailer of scandal. In these capacities he was without a rival. He always knew everything; and if he did not know it, he invented it, which in some respects was better, as it enabled him to flavour his anecdotes with a piquancy which was perhaps wanting in the original. He found occupation for his ears and tongue in a variety of topics; the heaviest subjects were not excluded, the lightest obtained a place in hisrépertoire. The rumour of the approaching change in the premiership, while passing through the Aldermaston crucible, encountered the report of Mademoiselle de la Normandie's refusal to dance herpas seulbefore Madame Rivière; the report of Lady Propagand's conversion to Romanism did not prevent Mr. Aldermaston's giving proper additional publicity to the whisper of Miss de Toddler's flight with the milkman.
There were not many people who liked Mr. Aldermaston, though there were a great many who feared him; but Lord Dollamore was among the former class. "He is ablagueur," Dollamore used to say; "and ablagueuris a detestable beast; but necessary to society; and Aldermaston is certainly clean. He knows how to behave himself, and is in fact an Ananias of polite society. Besides, he amuses me, and there are very few people in the world who amuse me."
So Lord Dollamore always spoke to Mr. Aldermaston at the club, and encouraged him to tell his anecdotes; and when he found him at Baden, he looked upon him as one of the resources of the place,-a purveyor of news infinitely fresher, more piquant, and more amusing than was to be found in the week-oldTimesor three-days-oldGalignani, which he found at Misses Marx's library.
So he again repeated, "And what's the latest news in this Inferno, Mr. Aldermaston?"
"Well, there's very little news here, my lord, very little indeed; except that young Lord Plaidington is gone--sent away this morning."
"Sent away?"
"Yes; his mother, Lady Macabaw, wouldn't stand it any longer. Last night Lord Plaidington took too much again, and began throwing the empty champagne-bottles out of the window of the Angleterre; so Lady Macabaw sent him off this morning with his tutor, the Rev. Sandford Merton, and they've gone to Strasburg, on the way to Italy."
"Serve him right, the young cub. I went away early last night--any heavy play late?"
"Yes; a Frenchman whom no one had ever seen before won a hatful at roulette, and some Englishman whom no one seemed to know backed him and stood in. They looked like breaking the bank at one time, but they didn't."
"Was Tchernigow at the tables?"
"No; the Prince did not show up at all,--has not been there for the last three nights."
"So much the worse for Benazet; but what does it mean?"
"Well, I've a notion about that that I won't broach to any one but your Lordship. I think I've found the clue to that story."
"What story? what clue?"
"Prince Tchernigow's sudden cessation from play. You know what a mania it was with him. It must have been something special to make him give it up."
"And what is the something special?"
"A woman."
"Ah!" said Lord Dollamore, warming a once into interest; "malheureux en jeu, heureux en amour,--the converse of the ordinarily-received motto. Has Mademoiselle Féodor arrived from the Gaieté? or who is the siren that charms our Prince from the tables?"
"Mademoiselle Féodor has not arrived, but some one else has. A much more dangerous person than Mademoiselle Féodor, and with much more lasting hopes in view."
Lord Dollamore looked keenly at his companion, and said, "I begin to find the scent warming; but I make it a rule never to guess. Tell your story, Mr. Aldermaston, please."
"Well, you know, Lord Dollamore, I'm staying at the Russie, and I've made myself so agreeable to Malmedie, the landlord there, by little bits of civility, that he generally comes up to my room in the morning and lets me know all that is going on. He showed me a letter that he had about a week ago, written in French, saying that a lady wanted rooms reserved for herself and maid; that she would not dine at thetable-d'hôte, being an invalid, and coming only for the benefit of the air and springs, but should require dinner and all her meals served in her own rooms. The French of the letter was excellent, but the idea of retirement looked essentially English. I never knew a Frenchwoman, in however bad a state of health, who could resist the attractions of society; so, though I said nothing to Malmedie, I guessed at once the lady was English; and as there seemed a mystery, I determined to penetrate it."
Lord Dollamore smiled, and whispered something to his stick; something of which the French word "chiffonnier" and the English word "garbage" were component parts; but Mr. Aldermaston did not hear the sentence, and only marking the smile, proceeded:
"They were expected on Wednesday afternoon, and I took care to be about. They came in theeilwagenfrom Carlsruhe,--a deuced fine-looking woman, with her face hidden in a thick black veil, and a very neat trim little French waiting-maid. The servant was French, but the boxes were English,--I'd take my oath of that. There was a substantial solidity about their make, a certainty about their locks and hinges, such as never yet was seen on a French box, I'll stake my existence."
"You have wonderful powers of observation, Mr. Aldermaston," said Dollamore, still grinning.
"Your lordship flatters me. I have a pair of eyes, and I think I can use them. I kept them pretty tightly fixed on the movements of the new-comers. Dinner was sent up to their rooms, but before it went up the lady's-maid went out. I was strolling about myself, with nothing to do just at that time, so I strolled after her. She went into the Angleterre, and in a few minutes came tripping out again. She went back to the Russie, and so did I. I had nothing to do, and sat down in the porch, behind one of those tubs with the orange-trees, to smoke a cigar. While I was smoking it, who should come up but Prince Tchernigow?"
"Prince Tchernigow!" cried Lord Dollamore. "Connu!I'm in full cry now, Mr. Aldermaston. But continue your story."
"Prince Tchernigow," continued Mr. Aldermaston, "and no one else. He asked for Madame Poitevin, in which name the rooms had been taken, and he was shown upstairs. He came the next day twice, twice yesterday; he was there this morning; and just now, as I came away from thetable-d'hôte, I met him on the steps going in."
"Mr. Aldermaston, you areimpayable!" said Dollamore. "I must pay a compliment to your perspicacity, even at the risk of forestalling the conclusion of your narrative. But you have told it so admirably, that no man with a grain of sense in his head could avoid seeing that Madame Poitevin is Mrs. Hammond."
"Exactly,--I have not a doubt of it," said the little man; "and if so, I think you and I, my lord, know some one whose state of mind must be awful."
"Yes," said Lord Dollamore, rising from his chair; "I see what you mean, and you are doubtless right. Poor Percy Hammond's relatives must feel it acutely. Goodnight, Mr. Aldermaston;" and he bowed and moved off.
"I'm not going to let that little cad indulge in any speculations about the Mitfords," said he to his stick. "That woman's far too good to be discussed by such vermin as that;" by which we may judge that Lord Dollamore's opinion of Lady Mitford had altered as his acquaintance with her had progressed.
The deductions which Mr. Aldermaston had made from this last experiment in espionage were tolerably correct. Laura Hammond was in Baden under the name of Madame Poitevin, and accompanied by the never-failing Marcelline.
She had hurried away from London for two reasons. The first, and by far the most important, was to perfect the conquest of Tchernigow; to clinch home that iron band which for the last two months she had been fitting round the Russian's neck; to bring him to make the offer of his hand at once. The short time passed in London since her husband's death had been spent in looking her future boldly in the face, and calculating within herself how she should mould it for the best. Lord Dollamore was right in one of his conjectures about her: she had made up her mind that the course of her life must henceforth be entirely altered. She knew well enough that even the short time she had been away from London and its world was sufficient to render her name almost forgotten; and she determined that when it was next mentioned it should be in a very different tone from that formerly adopted towards it. Respectability--that state so often sneered at and ridiculed by her--she now held in the highest veneration, and determined to attain to. She had her work to do; to restore herself in the world's good opinion, and to make, as soon as decency would permit, a good marriage. The last position gained, the first would necessarily follow. All she had to do, she thought, was to keep herself in seclusion and choose her intended victim.
She thought of Sir Laurence Alsager at once. She had yet for him a remnant of what she imagined was love, but what was really thwarted passion. Her feelings were stronger for him than for any other man; and he had large wealth, and a good old family title, and the good opinion of the world. When, after his interview with her, she saw the utter futility of her plans so far as he was concerned, she was enraged, but by no means defeated. The cast must be made in another direction, and at once. Prince Tchernigow was in town; she knew it, for she had had more than one note from him during her seclusion in the country, and she knew that Tchernigow was hanging on in town on the chance of seeing her. This flashed across her the moment Laurence had quitted her, and her heart gave a great leap. That was the man! He was a prince; he was three times as rich as Alsager, and was known in the best society of every capital in Europe. Life with him as his wife would not be spent buried two-thirds of the year in a great gaunt country-place, where interest in the Sunday-schools and the old women and the clergyman's charities were the excitements; life with him would be one round of gaiety, in which she would not be a follower, but a leader. He had been madly in love with her two years before; and from what she knew of his nature, she believed the passion still remained there. That could be easily ascertained. She would write him a note, bidding him to come and see her.
Tchernigow came at once. He had not been with Laura ten minutes before her sharp eyes had looked into his heart and read its secrets so far as she was concerned. He was chafing under a latent passion, a thwarted wish. When, just at the close of their companionship at Baden two years ago, he had ventured to make open protestation of his devotion to her, and she had turned on him with great dignity and snubbed him mercilessly, he had bowed and left her, cool and collected indeed in his manner, but inwardly raging like a volcano. He had never met with similar treatment. With him it was a question of throwing the handkerchief, to the delight of Nourmahal or whoever might be the lucky one towards whom his highness tossed it. The ladies of thecorps dramatiqueof the different Parisian theatres were wild with delight when they heard that Tchernigow had arrived in Paris, and the will ofmon Cosaque, as he was called by more than one, was supreme and indisputable among them. This was quite a new thing. Not merely to have his proffered love rejected, but to be soundly rated for having dared to proffer it, was to him almost inexplicable. It lashed him to fury. For the next season he kept away from London, determined to avoid the siren who held him in her toils, yet despised his suit. Then, hearing of her widowhood and her absence from London, he came to England with a half-formed determination in regard to her. He saw her, and almost instantaneously the smouldering fires of his passion were revivified, and blazed up more fiercely than ever.
He had more encouragement now, but even now not very much. He was permitted to declare his devotion to her, to rave in his odd wild way about her beauty, to kiss her hand on his arrival and departure--nothing more. Trust Laura Hammond for knowing exactly how to treat a man of Tchernigow's temperament. He came daily; he sat feasting his eyes on her beauty, and listening--sometimes in wonder, but always in admiration--to her conversation, which was now sparkling with wit and fun, now brimming over with sentiment and pathos. Day by day he became more and more hopelessly entangled by her fascinations, but as yet he had breathed no word about marriage; and to that end, and that alone, was Laura Hammond leading him on. But when Parliament was dissolved, and town rapidly thinning; when Laura's solicitor had written urgently to her, stating that "the other side" was pressing for a final settlement of affairs--which meant her abdicating her state and taking up her lowered position on her lessened income--Tchernigow called upon her, and while telling her that he was going to Baden, seemed to do more than hint that her hopes would be fulfilled, if she would consent to meet him there so soon as her business was accomplished.
This was the principal motive which had induced her to start for the pretty little Inferno on the border of the Black Forest. But the other was scarcely less cogent. The fact was, that Laura was wearying rapidly of the attentions of Sir Charles Mitford. Hercapricefor him was over. He had never had the power of amusing her; and since she knew that Laurence Alsager had left England, she saw that she could no longer wreak her vengeance on him by punishing Lady Mitford through the faithlessness of Sir Charles. Mitford saw that she was growing weary of him--marked it in a thousand different ways, and raged against it. Occasionally his manner to her would change from what she now called maudlin tenderness to savage ferocity; he would threaten her vaguely, he would watch her narrowly. It required all Laura's natural genius for intrigue, supplemented by Madlle. Marcelline's adroitness, to prevent his knowing of Tchernigow's visits. In his blind infatuation he was rapidly forgetting the decencies of life, theconvenancesof society; he was getting himself more and more talked about; what was worse, he was getting her talked about again, just at the time when she wanted to be forgotten by all men--save one. Mitford had followed her into the country, and only quitted her on her expressed determination never to speak to him again unless he returned to London at once, and saved her from the gossip of the neighbourhood. She knew he would insist on seeing her constantly when she returned to town. Hence her flight with only one hour's stoppage in London--and under a feigned name--to Baden.
"'I pray you come at once,'" said Dollamore, three days after his conversation with Mr. Aldermaston, reading to his stick the contents of a dainty little note which he had just received;--"'I pray you come at once.--Yours sincerely, Laura Hammond.' Very much yours sincerely, Laura Hammond, I should think. What the deuce does she want with me? Is she going to drive us three abreast, like the horses in the diligence? and does she think I should like to trot along between Mitford and Tchernigow? Not she! She knows me too well to think anything of that sort. But then what on earth does she want with me? 'I pray you come at once.' Egad, I must go, I suppose, and ask for Madame Poitevin, as she tells me."
He lounged up to the Hôtel de Russie, asked for Madame Poitevin, and was shown into a room where Laura was seated with Marcelline reading to her. Dollamore recollected Marcelline at once; he had an eye for beauty in every class, and had taken not an unfavourable notice of the trim littlesoubretteduring his stay at Redmoor. He wondered now what had caused this sudden elevation of her social status, and did not ascribe it to any good source. But he had little time to wonder about Marcelline, for she rose at once, and passing him with a slight bow, left the room as Mrs. Hammond advanced with outstretched hand. She looked splendidly handsome; her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed, her step elastic. Dollamore thought he had scarcely ever seen her to such advantage.
"You are surprised at my having sent to you, Lord Dollamore?" said she as soon as they were seated.
"No, indeed, Mrs. Hammond; I'm never surprised at anything. A man who has turned forty and suffers himself to be surprised is an idiot."
"Turned forty! Well, when you reach that age you shall tell me whether there is truth in that axiom." ("Flattering me!" said Dollamore to his stick; "wants to borrow money.") "But at all events you don't know why I asked you to come."
"I have not the remotest idea."
"How should you have? Three hours ago I myself had no anticipation of the occurrence of circumstances which have induced me to ask you to share a confidence."
"Hallo!" said Dollamore to his stick; "I share a confidence! She ought to have sent for Aldermaston." But he said aloud, "If I can be of any help to you--"
"You can be of the very greatest assistance. You may have heard how I have been left by my husband; how Mr. Hammond's relatives, by their cruel and secret machinations, so worked upon him in his enfeebled state as to induce him to make a most shameful will, by which I was robbed of all that ought to have been mine, and left with a beggarly income!" She had not forgotten that will, and any recurrence to it made her cheek flame in earnest.
Dollamore bowed. He ought to have expressed some pity or some astonishment; but he had never during his life been guilty of any conventionality.
"In this strait," she continued, "I have received succour from a totally unexpected quarter. In the most generous and delicate manner Prince Tchernigow has this day made me an offer of his hand." (Dollamore said he was never surprised, but if the stick was on the alert it must have heard him whistle.) "We are to be married at once!"
"Very satisfactory indeed," said Dollamore. "Fancy being a princess, with 'vassals and serfs by your side'!--Very delicious indeed."
"Oh, I'm so happy!" cried Laura, with that feigned ecstasy of joy which she had so often indulged in; "the Prince is so charming!"
"Is he indeed?" said Dollamore. "Yes; some people require to be known thoroughly before they're appreciated. But what will a friend of ours say to this? I mean Sir Charles Mitford."
"Ah!" said Laura, who turned pale at the name; "that is exactly the subject in which I require your assistance."
"Mine! How can I help you? Suppose he were to come here--"
"It is that I am dreading. I took every precaution to hide my destination. I came here under a feigned name; I have lived in the strictest retirement, having seen no one but the Prince since I have been here; and yet I never hear a carriage dash up to the door of the hotel but I rush to the window, and concealing myself behind the curtains, look out in the full expectation of seeing him leap into the portico. If he were to come now, under present circumstances, what should I do?--good God, what should I do?"
"What should you do? Tell him to go back again. You are not his wife, for him to bully and curse and order about. You are not bound to give in to his cowardly whims, and need not endure his ruffianly insults."
"You don't know him now; you don't know how frightful his temper has become to any one who crosses him. No, no, no, we shall be married at once, and leave this place; and should he come here afterwards, I trust you to tell him nothing more than you can possibly help; above all, to keep silence as to our intended route."
"That will be easily managed, by your not telling me which way you intend going. I'll do what I can to help you, Mrs. Hammond; but I may as well say, that the less I am brought into contact with Sir Charles Mitford, the better I shall be pleased."
"At all events you will do as much as I have asked you?" she said.
"I will; and as that principally consists in holding my tongue, I shall have no difficulty in doing it. When are you to be married?"
"To-morrow morning, at Frankfort, where there are both Russian and English embassies; and whence we start to--"
"You forget; I was not to know your route."
"I had forgotten," she said with a smile. She seemed reassured; her colour came again, and as she held out her hand, she said, "I may rely on you?"
"Rigidly to do nothing," he said; and took her hand, and left her.
"She's a very wonderful woman, and she certainly has had a great run of luck," said Dollamore, as he walked back to his hotel. "To think of her getting hold of this Calmuck savage! By Jove! rich as he is, she'll try and find her way to the bottom of his sack of roubles. Tchernigow is wealthy, but his intendant will have to screw up the moujiks to the last copeck to provide for madame's splendid power of spending. She's evidently completely frightened of Mitford now. It must be sheer brutality that has done that, for he was no match for her in spirit, or anything else."
As he said this, he arrived at the Badischer Hof, before the door of which was standing a dust-covered carriage with two steaming horses; and in the hall Lord Dollamore saw a man, whose back was towards him, talking earnestly to Mr. Aldermaston. The man turned round at the sound of footsteps, and then Dollamore saw that it was Sir Charles Mitford.
Yes; Sir Charles Mitford had arrived at Baden. He had written several times to Mrs. Hammond in her country retreat, and, getting no reply, had called at her London house. The old charwoman there left in attendance was as vague as Mrs. Hammond could possibly have wished her to be about her mistress's movements. She had been there, Lor' bless me, yes, she had been there; but when was it?--We'nesday week, she thought, but won't be by no means certain. It was the day as she had had b'iled rabbit for dinner; she knew that, 'cos she was preparin' the onions when there come that thunderin' rat-tat at the door, which quite discomposed her and made her 'art jump into her mouth. What had happened then? Not much--a puttin' a few things together, which the missis and the Frenchwoman managed between them. And then she was sent out for a cab; and the cab came, and they all got into it, and the cab went off. Where? She couldn't say; leastways, they would not let her hear the direction--told the cabman to drive straight on, and they would tell him presently; that was all she knew--yes, that was all she knew, and all Mitford could get out of her by the closest cross-questioning. Laura Hammond had escaped him; but of her destination he was absolutely ignorant.
How could he hit upon her track? The old woman--the last person who had seen her--was exhausted and pumped out, and had told next to nothing. Was there no one who could help him in this strait?--no one who could make some suggestion as to the best mode of discovering the fugitive? Yes!--a sudden brilliant thought struck him--the man who had discovered him when, as he thought, he lay so closely hid,--the detective, Inspector Stellfox.
He had given a handsome present to the inspector when he came into his kingdom--how long ago it seemed!--and he had seen him several times since on public occasions,--at the Opera, at Chiswick Flower-shows, at the Derby, and similar popular resorts. He had the inspector's address somewhere,--at some police-station down in the City; and he went to his desk, and turned over a heterogeneous collection of papers, and found it. Then he sent Banks down to the station-house; and that evening Inspector Stellfox was shown into Sir Charles's study, and placed by him in possession of the facts.
The inspector went to work in his own special way. It was a peculiar job, he said, and not too easy to work out; but he had hopes. He went back to the station-house, and communicated as much as he chose to tell to two of his best men. Then all three went to work. They found out the cabman who had taken Mrs. Hammond to the South-Eastern Railway; they found the porter who had taken the boxes off the cab, and the luggage-labeller who had marked them; they found the tick-clerk who had registered them "in transit," and whose book showed not merely the number of pounds' weight, but the name in which they were entered. They were booked for Cologne,--one could not in those days register any farther,--and for Cologne Sir Charles started immediately. There he picked up the trace. Two French ladies had arrived by the Ostend train, and gone--not to any of the grand hotels bordering the Rhine, but to a second-rate house, yet quiet and thoroughly respectable for all that--the Brüsseler Hof, kept for the last thirty years by Anton Schumacher. Were they recollected there? Of course they were. Anton Schumacher's eldest son Franz had been rather fetched by the trim appearance of the younger lady, and had gone down with them to the boat, and seen them on board the Königin Victoria, and recommended them specially to the care of theconducteur, who was a great friend of his. Where did they take tickets for? Why, at his advice, they took them for Cassel, on the left bank of the river. They were going, as he understood, to Baden-Baden, and he had advised them to sleep at Barth's--a right clean comfortable hotel in Cassel--and then post on to Frankfurt, where they could spend the afternoon and the night, and so get on right pleasantly to Baden the next day.
To Baden! Sir Charles Mitford's heart sunk within him as he heard the words. Baden! That was where Laura had been so talked about for her desperate carrying on with Tchernigow nearly three years ago. And she was gone there now, and Tchernigow had disappeared from London!
Doubtless they had arranged it all between them, and he was thrown overboard and sold. His mind was at once made up: he would follow her there or to the end of the earth; what did it matter to him? He told Banks to pack a small travelling valise; he called at Bligh's on his way to the station and gave him certain instructions, and he was off. Not a word of farewell to Georgie; not a look of kindness; not a kiss of love for that poor child lying broad awake and listening to his footsteps as he stole through the house at early morning! What could he have said to her?--he, going in search of his paramour, who had thrown him over,--what could he have said to the wife whom he had so cruelly treated, so recklessly betrayed?
So Sir Charles Mitford, after long and tedious days of travel, arrived at Baden, as we have seen; and the first person he encountered, ere he had scarcely put foot in the hall of the Badischer Hof, was Mr. Aldermaston. He had known him in London, and was perfectly aware of his qualification for news. There was no reticence in Sir Charles Mitford now; no coming delicately to the subject; no beating about the bush: all that had vanished long since. Besides, if there had been any delicacy remaining, Mr. Aldermaston was scarcely the kind of man for whom it would have been employed. So Sir Charles said at once, and hurriedly:
"How do, Aldermaston? Been here long?"
"Ah, Sir Charles, how do you do? Just arrived, I see. Yes; I've been here--O, three weeks about."
"Then can you tell me? Is Mrs. Hammond here?"
"There's no such name in theFremdenblatt-- theGazette des Étrangers, you know." His little eyes twinkled so, that even Mitford's dull comprehension was aroused.
"But for all that, she's here. Tell me, for God's sake!"
"Well, there's a French lady here--says she's French that's to say,--called Madame Poitevin, who might be Mrs. Hammond's twin sister."
"Ah!" Mitford gave a long sigh of relief. "I suppose she's attracted the usual amount of attention among all the people here, eh?"
"She would have, doubtless, had she ever courted it. But the truth is, she has never left her hotel."
"Never left her hotel!" echoed Mitford, obviously delighted. "Which is her hotel? where is she staying?"
"At the Russie, lower down the town."
"Here under a feigned name, and never leaving her rooms,--that's strange," said Mitford.
"Yes; must be dull for her," said little Aldermaston, looking up to see the effect his words had on his companion; "lives in strict seclusion."
"Does she indeed? Poor girl! poor Laura!"
"Yes,--only one person permitted to see her; only one who is allowed to mingle his tears with hers."
"One person! and who is that?"
"A friend of hers,--Prince Tchernigow."
"Damnation!" screamed Mitford; "is he here? That cursed Russian with his sallow face has always been hanging about her; and is he here now?"
"O yes, he's here now; has been here for the last month, and has seen her twice every day since she arrived. I happen to know that," said Mr. Aldermaston, "from private sources of information."
"He has, has he? Curse him!" said Mitford, white with rage.
"O yes, he has; and curse him if you like to me," said Mr. Aldermaston. "He's no friend of mine; and if he were, I don't know that I've any right to object because a gentleman curses him. But I don't think I'd curse him too strongly to Mrs. Hammond when you see her."
"Why not?"
"Well, simply because he's going to be married to her to-morrow morning."
"To be married to her! You lie, sir!--you lie!"
"I say, look here, Mr.--Sir Charles Mitford; there is a point which must not be passed;--thus far shalt thou go, you know, and that sort of thing;--and you must not tell a gentleman he lies--'pon my soul you mustn't!"
"I beg your pardon; I scarcely know what I'm saying. To be married to-morrow morning!--to be married!"
"O yes; it's all right; it's not what you said, you know, but as true as possible. I know it for a fact, because I was at the post-office just now, and I saw letters addressed to the Russian ambassador, and to Mr. Koch, our consul at Frankfurt; and Malmedie told me that the prince's man has been over here to order a carriage and relays for the morning."
"What did you say the name was under which she was passing?"
"Madame Poitevin. But why?"
"Nothing-no matter; now the Hôtel de Russie!--all right;" and he started off up the street.
"C'est lui! mon, Dieu, madame! c'est lui!" That was all Mademoiselle Marcelline had time to utter as she opened the door of Mrs. Hammond's rooms to a hasty knock, and a tall figure strode past her. Mademoiselle Marcelline, even in the fading evening light, recognized the well-known form of Sir Charles Mitford; but her exclamation caused Mrs. Hammond to think it was Prince Tchernigow of whom she spoke, and to impute Marcelline's evident terror to the fact that she had not then put the finishing touches to her toilette or hercoiffure.
When she saw who was her visitor, she made up her mind instantaneously to the line of conduct to be pursued, and said:
"May I ask the meaning, Sir Charles Mitford, of this strange intrusion into a lady's private rooms?"
He stopped still, and winced under her cold words as though cut by a whip. When he regained his voice, he said:
"Laura! Laura! what does this mean?"
"That is what I call upon you to, explain. You come unannounced into my rooms, and then ask me what it means. You have been dining, Sir Charles Mitford!"
"Ah, I know what you're up to, then; but you're not right--I'll swear you're not right. Not one drop of anything have I had for God knows how many hours. But I'm faint, weary, and heart-broken. Tell me, tell me, you heartless devil, is this true that I've heard?" He alternated from maudlin sentimentality to fierce rage, and it was difficult to say under which aspect he was most detestable.
"Let go my hand," said she, trying to snatch her wrist from his clutch; "let go my hand, or I'll call for assistance! How can I tell whether what you've heard is true or not, when you've not had sense enough to tell me what it is?"
She spoke in a deadly cold metallic voice; and what she said roused him to a pitch of fury. Ever since she had first discovered that he occasionally resorted to the brandy-bottle, she had taunted him with covert allusions to his drinking, well aware that nothing rendered him so savage.
"Curse you!" he said, "that's your old taunt. Did you not hear me say that nothing had passed my lips for hours? Now, answer me one question, or rather first hear me speak. I know all."
"Do you?" said she with a sneer; "then you are a cleverer man than ever I imagined you to be!"
"Prince Tchernigow is in Baden."
"And what of that?"
"He visits you daily--twice a day."
"And what of that? Why should he not? What is that to you?"
"Oh, Laura!--Oh, my darling Laura! What is it to me, she asks? I, who worship her shadow, who would put my neck down for her to tread upon!--Then he does visit you?"
"He does visit me. Does that answer content you? You deny that you have been drinking, Sir Charles Mitford, and yet you go on with this senseless rodomontade!"
"Then let him look out for himself, Laura Hammond!--that's all I have to say;--let him look out for himself."
"He is perfectly able to do that, if there were occasion. But there is no occasion now!" She took her cue from Dollamore's hint. "I'm not your wife, Sir Charles Mitford, for you to bully and threaten. You have no hold over me. And if you had, I am not a puny white-faced snivelling school-girl, to be put down by big words and black looks!"
"You are not my wife!" he repeated. "No, God knows you speak truth in that, at all events! You are not my wife."
His voice fell, and the tone in which he uttered these words was very low. Did a thought come over him of the "white-faced snivelling school-girl" who was his wife, and whom he had quitted without one word of adieu? Did the white face rise up in judgment before him then, as it would rise up in judgment on a certain grand day? He passed his hand across his eyes and sat silent.
"No, I am not your wife," she continued, "thank God! I never would have been your wife. And now listen, for this is the last time you and I will ever be alone together; yes--I swear it--the last time! What we have been to each other--the nature of the tie between us--you know as well as I. But what prompted me to permit the establishment of such a tie, you donotknow, and so I will tell you. Revenge, Sir Charles Mitford, revenge!--that was the sole spur that urged me on to allow my name to be coupled with yours--to allow you to think that you had a hold over me, body and soul. You imagined I cared for you! That poor piece of propriety in England was jealous of me!--jealous of my having robbed her of her pet-lamb, her innocent Southdown! I cared for you then as much as I care for you now--no, I wrong you, I eared for you a little more then, just a little more, because you were useful to me. Now my need for such a tool is ended, and--I cast you off!"
She stood up as ho said these words, and made a motion with her hand, corresponding to the speech, as though throwing him away. He looked at her in astonishment--then his face darkened, and he said:
"Do you dare to tell me this?"
"I dare anything," she replied, "as you might have learnt ere this. Do you recollect the night in the fir-plantation, when your friend Captain Bligh came out in search of you, and we stood together within an arm's length of him? What did I dare then?"
"Not so much as you dare now, if you did but know!" said Mitford. "You knew then that, had the worst come to the worst, you had a man at your feet who was prepared to brave all for you; who would have scorned the world and all that the world could say; who would have taken you far away out of the chance of its venom and the breath of its scandal, and devoted his life to securing your happiness. Your reputation was even then beginning to be tainted; your name had even then been buzzed about, and you would have gained--ay, gained--rather than lost by the fortunate accident which would have made one man your slave for ever!"
"I had no idea you had such a talent for eloquence," said she calmly. "Even in your maddest access of passion--for you are, I suppose, the 'one man' who was prepared to do such mighty things--you never warmed up to say so many sensible words consecutively! But suppose you are arguing on wrong premises? Suppose there is a man who is prepared to do all that that hypothetical 'one man' would have dared? Prepared--ay, and able--to do more! More, for that 'one man' was married, and could only have placed me virtuously in the eyes of the world after long and tedious legal ceremonies. Suppose that there is now a man able and willing--nay more, dying--to make me his wife, what then?"
"Then," said Sir Charles, "I go back to what I said before--let him look to himself--let him look to himself!"
"He is perfectly ready to do so, Sir Charles Mitford," said a low deep voice.
Both turned, and both saw Prince Tchernigow standing in the doorway. Laura gave a great start, and rushed to his side. He put his arm calmly round her, and said:
"Do not disturb yourself, Laura; there is no occasion for fright."
"Ah!" said Mitford, with a deep inhalation of his breath, "I have found you at last, have I? You are here, Prince Tchernigow! So much the better! Let me tell you, sir, that--"
"Even Sir Charles Mitford will recollect," said Tchernigow, "that one chooses one's language in the presence of ladies!" Then, in a lower tones "I shall be at the rooms in half an hour."
Mitford nodded sulkily and took up his hat. Then, with a low bow to Mrs. Hammond, he left the room.
An hour had passed, and the space in front of the Kürsaal was thronged as usual. At a table by himself sat Sir Charles Mitford, drinking brandy-and-water, and ever and anon casting eager glances round him. His eyes were bloodshot, his hand shook as he conveyed the glass to his lips, and his whole face was puckered and livid. The aspect of his face brightened as he saw Prince Tchernigow approaching him. Tchernigow was alone, and was making his way with the utmost deliberation to the table at which he saw Mitford seated. He came up, took off his hat with a grave bow, and remained standing. Mitford swallowed what remained of his drink, and stood up beside him.
"You were waiting for me, M. Mitford?" said Tchernigow. "I am sorry to have detained you; but it was unavoidable. You used words just now--in a moment of anger doubtless--which you are already probably sorry for."
"They were words which I used intentionally and with deliberation," said Mitford. "I spoke of some man--then to me unnamed--who had come between me and Mrs. Hammond--"
"I scarcely understand the meaning of the phrase 'come between,' M. Mitford. It is doubtless my ignorance of your language to which I must ascribe it. But how could any one 'come between' a married man and a widow--granting, of course, that the married man is a man of honour?"
Mitford ground his teeth, but was silent.
"And supposing always," continued Tchernigow, "that there was some one sufficiently interested in the widow to object to any 'coming between'?--some one who had proposed himself in marriage to her, and who intended to make her his wife?"
The truth flashed across Mitford in an instant. He was beaten on all sides; but there was yet a chance of revenge.
"And suppose there were such a fool," he said,--"which, I very much doubt,--the words I used I would use again, and if need were, I would cram them down his throat!"
"Eh bien, M. Mitford!" said Tchernigow, changing his language, but ever keeping his quiet tone,--"eh bien! M. Mitford, décidément vous êtes un lâche!"
A crash, a gathering of a little crowd, and the waiter-who was so like Bouffé--raised Prince Tchernigow from the ground, with a little blood oozing from a spot beneath his temple. "He had stumbled over a chair," he said; "but it was nothing."
In deep consultation with his stick, Lord Dollamore was lounging round the outer ring at the roulette-table, when Sir Charles Mitford, with a flushed face and dishevelled hair, with rumpled wristbands and shirt-collar awry, made his way to him, and begged for a few minutes' conversation apart.
Shrugging his shoulders, and obviously unwilling, Dollamore stepped aside with him into an embrasure of the window, and then Mitford said:
"I am in a mess, and I want your help."
"In what way?"
"I have had a row with Tchernigow--you can guess about what; he insulted me, and I struck him. He'll have me out of course, and I want you to act for me."
Lord Dollamore paused for an instant, and took the stick's advice. Then he said:
"Look here, Si Charles Mitford: in the least offensive way possible, I want to tell you that I can't do this."
"You refuse me?
"I do. We were acquaintances years ago, when you were quite a boy; and when you came to your title you renewed the acquaintance. I did not object then; and had things continued as they were then, I would willingly have stood by you now. But they are not as they were then; they are entirely changed, and all for the worse. You have been going to the bad rapidly for the last twelve months; and, in short, have compromised yourself in a manner which renders it impossible for me to be mixed up in any affair of yours."
"I understand you perfectly, Lord Dollamore," said Mitford, in a voice hoarse with rage, "The next request I make to you--and it shall be very shortly too--will be that you will stand not by me, but before me!"
"In that case," said Dollamore, with a bow,--"in that case, Sir Charles Mitford, you will not have to complain of a refusal on my part."
Mitford said nothing, but he was cut to the quick. He had noticed--he could not, even with his blunted feelings and defiant temper, avoid noticing--that men's manners towards him had lately much changed; that acquaintances plunged up by-streets as they saw him coming, or buried themselves in the sheets of newspapers when he entered the club-room; but he had never been directly insulted before. He would revenge himself on Dollamore before he left Baden; meanwhile there was business on hand, and who should he ask to be his second? Mr. Aldermaston, of course; and he sought him at once. Mr. Aldermaston was only too delighted. To be second to a baronet in a duel with a prince, and then to have the story to tell afterwards, particularly if one of them killed the other--he didn't much care which--would set him up for life. Mr. Aldermaston agreed at once, and was put in communication with Prince Tchernigow's friend; and the meeting was arranged for sunrise in the Black Forest, just above the entrance to the Murgthal.
Prince Tchernigow called on Laura late in the afternoon on which these preliminaries were arranged. It is needless to say that he did not hint at them to her; indeed such care had he taken, that Laura had no idea Sir Charles Mitford had met the Prince since their first interview in Baden, though probably Mademoiselle Marcelline might have been better informed. But Tchernigow said on reflection it appeared to him better that she should go to Frankfurt that evening,--it would put a stop to any chance of talk, he said, and he would join her there at the Romischer Kaiser the next morning. Laura agreed, as she would have agreed to anything he might have proposed--so happy was she just then; and while the visitors were engaged at the latetable-d'hôte, a carriage drew up at the side-door of the Hôtel de Russie, and Mrs. Hammond and Mademoiselle Marcelline started for Frankfurt.