"My father is dead, and with him the dreams which for years we have dreamt together. Was there ever a more cruel irony of Fate than this? Was Fate itself ever more unkind to man or woman? Only a few weeks ago, and I had sold myself, with his consent, so far did our devotion go to serve the sacred cause of our house, to this big, handsome Alsatian—a servant of the German Emperor, the arch-enemy of our country, the owner of the two provinces which my ancestor Louis tore from Germany. I did it because in high politics it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice oneself, partly too because no other man had appealed to me as he did. I knew that he was running tremendous risks; I believed—yes, and I still believe, that he was risking everything—rank, honour, liberty, even life itself, by wearing the uniform of his country's enemy so that he might learn his enemy's secrets."He loves me—yes, if ever man loved woman, he loves me—me, Adelaide de Condé, Marquise de Montpensier; and I—ah, mon Dieu, is it possible that the daughter of Marie Antoinette has sunk so low?—I allowed him to believe that I loved him too. He believes it now. I suppose he would still believe it, even if he knew what I know now—that his father is dead, that the secret of the world-empire which he could have given us, that power for which I promised myself to him, so that I might share it with him, has gone, that it is worse than lost, since the Fates have given it into the hands of the enemies of our house."And so it is gone—worse than gone—and so, my friend Victor, I am afraid you will have to find out in the course of circumstances that a woman's smiles do not always mean a reflection of the light in her lover's eyes, and that her kisses do not always mean love. It is a pity, because, after all, I believe you are a true Frenchman, even if you wear a German uniform; and if that dream had become a reality, and you and I had shared the throne of France, perhaps I should have loved you as well and as truly as most queens have loved their consorts."But, alas, my poor Victor, the sceptre has passed away—for the time being, at least—from the House of Bourbon. It is given into the hands of our enemies, and so you, by force of fate, must stand aside. I shall not tell you this yet, because afterwards, perhaps, you may be useful. I wonder what you would think of me—even you, a man who in the old days would only have been a sort of slave, living or dying socially as the great Louis smiled or frowned upon you—I wonder what you would think if you could look over my shoulder and read this writing and see a woman's soul laid naked on this page. Perhaps you might think me utterly mean and contemptible—you would if you didn't understand; but if you did, if you could see all and understand all—well, then, you might hate me, but I think you would be man enough to respect me."At least you are diplomatist enough to know, after all, in the great game of politics, a game that is played for the mastery of kingdoms and peoples, to say nothing of the empire of the world, women have to count themselves as pawns. Even the cleverest, the most brilliant, the most beautiful of us—that is all we are. Sometimes our beauty or the charm of our subtle wit may win the outer senses of the rulers of the world; they may admire us physically or mentally, or both, but even at the best, it is only the man that we enslave. The man goes to sleep for a night, he dreams perhaps of our beauty and the delight of our society, but in the morning it is the statesman that wakes, and he looks back on the little weakness of the night before, and thinks of us as an ordinary man might think of the one extra liqueur which he ought not to have taken after a good dinner."And now these English—these people into whose hands Fate has given my heritage! Ah, cruel Fate; why did you not make them hateful, vulgar, common—something that I could hate and tread under foot—something that I could think as far beneath me as the bourgeois canaille of Republican France? But you have made them aristocratic! Lord Orrel's lineage goes back past the days of St Louis. His ancestors fought side by side with mine in the first Crusade. True, they have mixed their blood with that American froth, the skimming of the pot-bouillé of the nations, but still, after all, the old blood tells."Lady Olive—how I wish that she were either vulgar or ugly, so that I could hate her!—is a daughter of the Plantagenets fit to mate with a Prince of Bourbon, if there were one worthy of her. Lord Orrel might have been one of those who went with the Eighth Henry to meet Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, patrician in every turn of voice and manner and movement. And Shafto Hardress, who will be Earl of Orrel some day, and master of the world: yes, he is a patrician too; but with him there is something a little different—the American blood perhaps—keen, quick, alert, one moment indolently smoking his cigar and sipping his coffee, the next on his feet, ready to assume the destinies of nations. A man, too, strong and kindly—a man who would risk his life to save a drowning dog, and yet strike down an enemy in his path, so that he might rise a foot or so on the ladder of fame or power. But he is more than that, he wants far more than the empty fame of applause. The fame he wants is that which comes from acknowledged power. You can see the dreamer in his eyes and on his forehead, and you can see the doer on that beautiful, pitiless mouth of his and the square, strong jaw which is under it."What a man to love and to be loved by! What would he think, I wonder, if he could read what I am writing here! And yet, are not all things possible? Is it not the unexpected that comes to pass? Why not? Behold, I am left desolate, the garden that I called my heart is a wilderness—a wilderness ploughed up by the ploughshare of sorrow and bitterness, and so it lies fallow. Would it be possible for him to sow the seed for which it is waiting?—and then the harvest would be the empire of the world shared between us! Well, after all, I am not only Adelaide de Condé, daughter of a lost dynasty. I am a woman, with all the passions and ambitions of our race burning hot within me. If I cannot sit on the throne of the Bourbons, why should I not be empress-consort on the throne of a world-wide empire?—why not? It would be a magnificent destiny!"
"My father is dead, and with him the dreams which for years we have dreamt together. Was there ever a more cruel irony of Fate than this? Was Fate itself ever more unkind to man or woman? Only a few weeks ago, and I had sold myself, with his consent, so far did our devotion go to serve the sacred cause of our house, to this big, handsome Alsatian—a servant of the German Emperor, the arch-enemy of our country, the owner of the two provinces which my ancestor Louis tore from Germany. I did it because in high politics it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice oneself, partly too because no other man had appealed to me as he did. I knew that he was running tremendous risks; I believed—yes, and I still believe, that he was risking everything—rank, honour, liberty, even life itself, by wearing the uniform of his country's enemy so that he might learn his enemy's secrets.
"He loves me—yes, if ever man loved woman, he loves me—me, Adelaide de Condé, Marquise de Montpensier; and I—ah, mon Dieu, is it possible that the daughter of Marie Antoinette has sunk so low?—I allowed him to believe that I loved him too. He believes it now. I suppose he would still believe it, even if he knew what I know now—that his father is dead, that the secret of the world-empire which he could have given us, that power for which I promised myself to him, so that I might share it with him, has gone, that it is worse than lost, since the Fates have given it into the hands of the enemies of our house.
"And so it is gone—worse than gone—and so, my friend Victor, I am afraid you will have to find out in the course of circumstances that a woman's smiles do not always mean a reflection of the light in her lover's eyes, and that her kisses do not always mean love. It is a pity, because, after all, I believe you are a true Frenchman, even if you wear a German uniform; and if that dream had become a reality, and you and I had shared the throne of France, perhaps I should have loved you as well and as truly as most queens have loved their consorts.
"But, alas, my poor Victor, the sceptre has passed away—for the time being, at least—from the House of Bourbon. It is given into the hands of our enemies, and so you, by force of fate, must stand aside. I shall not tell you this yet, because afterwards, perhaps, you may be useful. I wonder what you would think of me—even you, a man who in the old days would only have been a sort of slave, living or dying socially as the great Louis smiled or frowned upon you—I wonder what you would think if you could look over my shoulder and read this writing and see a woman's soul laid naked on this page. Perhaps you might think me utterly mean and contemptible—you would if you didn't understand; but if you did, if you could see all and understand all—well, then, you might hate me, but I think you would be man enough to respect me.
"At least you are diplomatist enough to know, after all, in the great game of politics, a game that is played for the mastery of kingdoms and peoples, to say nothing of the empire of the world, women have to count themselves as pawns. Even the cleverest, the most brilliant, the most beautiful of us—that is all we are. Sometimes our beauty or the charm of our subtle wit may win the outer senses of the rulers of the world; they may admire us physically or mentally, or both, but even at the best, it is only the man that we enslave. The man goes to sleep for a night, he dreams perhaps of our beauty and the delight of our society, but in the morning it is the statesman that wakes, and he looks back on the little weakness of the night before, and thinks of us as an ordinary man might think of the one extra liqueur which he ought not to have taken after a good dinner.
"And now these English—these people into whose hands Fate has given my heritage! Ah, cruel Fate; why did you not make them hateful, vulgar, common—something that I could hate and tread under foot—something that I could think as far beneath me as the bourgeois canaille of Republican France? But you have made them aristocratic! Lord Orrel's lineage goes back past the days of St Louis. His ancestors fought side by side with mine in the first Crusade. True, they have mixed their blood with that American froth, the skimming of the pot-bouillé of the nations, but still, after all, the old blood tells.
"Lady Olive—how I wish that she were either vulgar or ugly, so that I could hate her!—is a daughter of the Plantagenets fit to mate with a Prince of Bourbon, if there were one worthy of her. Lord Orrel might have been one of those who went with the Eighth Henry to meet Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, patrician in every turn of voice and manner and movement. And Shafto Hardress, who will be Earl of Orrel some day, and master of the world: yes, he is a patrician too; but with him there is something a little different—the American blood perhaps—keen, quick, alert, one moment indolently smoking his cigar and sipping his coffee, the next on his feet, ready to assume the destinies of nations. A man, too, strong and kindly—a man who would risk his life to save a drowning dog, and yet strike down an enemy in his path, so that he might rise a foot or so on the ladder of fame or power. But he is more than that, he wants far more than the empty fame of applause. The fame he wants is that which comes from acknowledged power. You can see the dreamer in his eyes and on his forehead, and you can see the doer on that beautiful, pitiless mouth of his and the square, strong jaw which is under it.
"What a man to love and to be loved by! What would he think, I wonder, if he could read what I am writing here! And yet, are not all things possible? Is it not the unexpected that comes to pass? Why not? Behold, I am left desolate, the garden that I called my heart is a wilderness—a wilderness ploughed up by the ploughshare of sorrow and bitterness, and so it lies fallow. Would it be possible for him to sow the seed for which it is waiting?—and then the harvest would be the empire of the world shared between us! Well, after all, I am not only Adelaide de Condé, daughter of a lost dynasty. I am a woman, with all the passions and ambitions of our race burning hot within me. If I cannot sit on the throne of the Bourbons, why should I not be empress-consort on the throne of a world-wide empire?—why not? It would be a magnificent destiny!"
When she had written this she laid her pen down, put her elbows on the table, and, with her chin between her hands, looked up in silence for some minutes at the moon sailing through rank after rank of fleecy clouds. Then she took up her pen again, and wrote:
"I wonder if there is another woman?"
"I wonder if there is another woman?"
She looked at the last words for a moment or two, then put down her pen, closed the book and locked it, and, as she put it away into a drawer of her writing-table, she murmured:
"Ah, well, if there is—if there is——" She caught a sight of herself in the long glass of one of the wardrobes, and she saw a tall, exquisitely-shaped figure of a beautiful woman clad in the plainest of mourning. She looked at herself with eyes of unsparing criticism, and found no fault, and she turned away from the glass, saying:
"Ah, well, if there is—we shall see—and, if there really is, I wonder what she's like."
CHAPTER X
Within a week after the funeral Adelaide and Madame de Condé returned to the late prince's hotel on the Ringstrasse in Vienna. They had taken most cordial leave of Lord Orrel and his son and daughter, and, in spite of all their prejudices of race and nation, Adelaide de Condé had brought something more away with her than the memory of a great sorrow tempered by the kindness of those whom a strange freak of fortune had made friends as well as enemies.
Even the two or three days that she had spent in his society had sufficed to show her that Shafto Hardress possessed in an infinitely greater degree those qualities which go to make the rulers of humanity than her big handsome Alsatian, whose utmost ambition was the command of an army corps. He had the hard, keen, unemotional common-sense which enabled him to see even the tremendous possibilities of Emil Fargeau's discovery in a purely practical and even commercial light, but at the same time he possessed sufficient imagination to enable him to see how far-reaching the moral and social effects of the working-out of the scheme would be on the peoples of the world.
She had herself said nothing of what had passed during that terrible night. For all they knew, the prince had taken the secret with him to the grave. Once Lord Orrel had very delicately led the conversation up as near to the edge of this supremely important subject as his instincts would let him go, but he had learnt nothing, and an hour or so later he said to his son:
"My dear Shafto, it is perfectly certain that my dear old friend the prince died without giving her any inkling of the great secret which he took to the grave with him."
"Either that, dad," he replied, "or she is the most perfect diplomatist in Europe. I think I have heard you say that the first essential of diplomacy is the ability to assume a perfect counterfeit of innocence and ignorance—in other words, to convey the impression that you know nothing when you know everything."
"Well, if that is so in this case," replied his father, "the mask which mam'selle wears is as impenetrable as it is beautiful. Really, Shafto, I think that rumour did not exaggerate when it called her the most beautiful woman in Europe."
"Yes," said Hardress, slowly; "she certainly is very lovely, and, from the little I've seen of her, she seems as gifted as she is beautiful."
"Then, my dear boy, if you really think that," said Lord Orrel, "how would it be if you were to repair this involuntary injustice which the Fates have wrought upon her? The most beautiful woman in Europe, and perhaps the most nobly born, and you one of the masters of the world! Why not? There is the realisation of a dream even greater than the prince's; and if I have any skill in reading a woman's face or woman's eyes, it is a dream not very difficult for you to realise."
Hardress laughed, and shook his head, and said:
"No, dad; I'm afraid that's not difficult. It's impossible."
The earl looked up sharply, and said:
"Oh, then, of course, there is someone else in the case; and that can hardly be anyone but——"
"You're quite right, dad; it's Chrysie Vandel. I meant to tell you before, but such a lot of things have happened since I got here, and I didn't really think it was of very much consequence for the present—because, after all, she's only accepted me conditionally—but, lovely and all as the marquise is, I think I would rather rule over the Orrel estates with Chrysie than over the world with her."
"Then that, of course, settles it," said the earl, with a certain note of displeasure in his voice. "Miss Vandel is a most charming and fascinating girl, but you will perhaps pardon me, Shafto, if I say that she no more compares with the daughter of the royal line of France than——"
"You needn't go on, dad," said Hardress, interrupting him with a laugh; "comparisons are always more or less unpleasant; and then, you see, you're not in love with either of them, and I'm pretty badly in love with one."
"Well, well," said his father, "of course, if that's the case, there's an end of it, and there's nothing more to be said. Still, for more reasons than one, I must say that I wish you had met the marquise first. The Plantagenets and the Bourbons would have made a splendid stock."
On the same day that this conversation took place in the gardens of the Hôtel Wilhelmshof in Elsenau, a very different one was taking place in the prince's hotel at Vienna between Adelaide de Condé and Victor Fargeau, who, on receipt of the news of the prince's death, had obtained a few days' leave, and travelled post-haste from Petersburg to Vienna.
It was after dinner, and Madame de Condé had retired to her own room with a slight attack of nerves. The marquise and Victor Fargeau were sitting on either side of the open fireplace, with a little table, holding coffee and liqueurs, between them. Adelaide had accepted a cigarette from his case, and he had lit one too. For several minutes after her aunt had left the room she puffed daintily at her cigarette, and looked across at him with intricately-mingled feelings. At length Victor broke the silence by saying, with a note of impatience in his tone:
"And now, Mam'selle la Marquise, or, if you like it better, my most beautiful Adelaide, I have possessed my soul in patience for nearly two hours. When are you going to tell me this wonderful news of yours?"
"Wonderful, my dear Victor? Alas, it is not only that; it is most sorrowful as well." Then, bracing herself with a visible effort, she threw her half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace, and, gripping the arms of the big chair in which she was sitting, she went on, staring straight into his eyes: "It is nothing less than the story of how your father met his end, and what became of his great secret."
"Nom de Dieu!" he cried, springing to his feet; "you know that, and from whom?"
"From these English and Americans—or Anglo-Americans, as I suppose I ought to call them," she replied; "the people to whom the Fates gave the secret with your father's dead and mutilated body; the people who buried him—the man who might have been the saviour of France—in a nameless English grave."
She kept her voice as steady as she could while she was saying this; she even tried to speak coldly and pitilessly, for she had made up her mind that the reasons of state for her betrothal to this man no longer existed. She had an even higher stake to play for now, and, in spite of all her pride of blood and racial prejudice, this would not be a sacrifice; on the contrary, it would be rather a victory—and so she hardened her voice, as she had done her heart.
"Dead! mutilated!" he exclaimed again. "Yes; I knew he was dead, for he told me in his letter from Paris that he would not, and could not, survive the failure of all his hopes. There were reasons why he should not, but they are of no consequence now. He staked everything, and lost everything, and that is enough. It is not for me to be his judge, now that he has gone to the presence of the highest Judge of all."
"That was said like a good son and a true man, Victor," replied the marquise, with a swift glance of something like admiration at his flushed and handsome face. "But there is something more serious than even the death of one whom you have loved and I have most deeply respected. I heard enough from my own father, during the night he died, to convince me that these people have not only got the secret, but that they are already devoting millions to convert your father's theory into a terrible reality.
"This Viscount Branston, Lord Orrel's son, has already been across to America, and has leased the land about the Magnetic Pole from the Canadian Government. A syndicate has been formed, and even at this very moment the preliminaries of the work are being pushed forward as rapidly as possible. Within a few months they will have begun the storage station itself, and then nothing can save the world from the irresistible power which will be theirs."
While she was speaking, Victor was striding up and down the dining-room, his hands clasped behind his back, and his frowning eyes bent on the thick carpet. Suddenly he stopped and faced her, and said, in sharp, almost passionate accents:
"Perhaps it is not too late after all. My father left me those papers in duplicate. I am weary—sick to death of playing this double game. In a few months war between France and Germany will be inevitable. Russia will side with us, and the prize of the victors will be—for France, the restoration of the Lost Provinces, and a good fat slice of China, and for Russia the whole of Northern China and Korea. Germany hasn't a friend on earth. The English hate her because she is beating them in trade rivalry; Austria has no more forgotten Sadowa than we have forgotten Sedan. Italy is crippled for lack of money, and so is Spain. The rest don't matter; and England and America will be only too glad to stand aside and see Europe tear itself to pieces. So France and Russia will win, and we shall crush our conqueror into the dust."
"But how can that be?" she interrupted, "if your father's calculations were correct—as these people have evidently found them to be—for if they had not done so they would not have risked their millions on them. From what you and he have told me of his discovery, once these works are set in operation round the Magnetic Pole, fighting will be impossible, save with the permission of those who own them. Metals, as he proved in his last experiment, will become brittle as glass, cannons and rifles will burst at the first shot, even swords and bayonets will be no more use than icicles; steam-engines will cease to work, and the world will go back to the age of wood and stone.
"Picture to yourself, my dear Victor, the armed millions of Europe facing each other, unable to fire a shot, or even to make a bayonet charge. Fancy the fleets of Russia and France and Germany laid up like so many worn-out hulks. No, no, my friend; there can be no talk of serious war while these people possess the power of preventing it at their will."
"But war there must and shall be!" he exclaimed. "I have not been a traitor to my country even in appearance, I have not worn this German uniform—this livery of slavery—for nothing. I have not wormed my way into the confidence of my superiors, I have not risked something worse than death to discover the details of Germany's next campaign against France, to have all my work brought to nothing at the eleventh hour by these English-Americans. No, there may be time even yet; I have risked much, and I will risk more; and you, Adelaide, will you help me? Will you keep the compact which your father made with mine?"
She had been growing paler all the time he had been speaking, knowing instinctively what was coming. She rose slowly from her chair, and said, almost falteringly:
"What do you mean, Victor? How can I help you, when these people already have the secret in their hands, and have been spending their millions for weeks? What can we do against them?"
"We can do this," he replied, stopping again in his walk; "my father pledged his honour as well as everything else he had in the world to insure the success of this scheme. I, his son, can do no less; I will pledge mine in the same cause. I am on leave, and I can wear plain clothes. To-morrow I will start for Paris and see if I cannot bring that pig-headed Minister of War to something like reason. I think I have a suggestion which he will find worth working out, and certainly he will be interested in other things that I shall put before him. Germany I have done with. I have worn the livery of shame too long. Henceforth I am what I was born—a Frenchman. I will resign my commission to-morrow, even if France lets me starve for it. I can easily do that, for the son of a disgraced man cannot remain in the German army, and my poor father disgraced himself to make France the mistress of the world. A miserable Jew in Strassburg holds the honour of our family in his hand. I have no money to redeem it, and so it must go."
She had almost said, "Victor, I am rich; let me redeem it," when she remembered that she was no longer more loyal to him than he was to Germany. All the while that he had been talking she had been thinking, almost against her will, of Shafto Hardress, and comparing him only too favourably with this man, who, however honourable his motives might seem to himself, was still a traitor and a spy. Instead of this, she said, rising and holding out her hand, "Well, Victor, so far as I can help you I will. We are going to Paris ourselves in a few days, and, by the way, that reminds me I had a letter from Sophie Valdemar only this morning, telling me that she and the count are going there too."
"Ah yes," replied Victor; "a mixture of diplomacy and pleasure, I've no doubt. I wonder what the fair Sophie would give to know what you and I know, Adelaide?"
"A good deal, no doubt," smiled Adelaide, as they shook hands. "Of one thing I'm quite certain; if Russia had the knowledge that you are going to give to France, Russia would find some means of making those storage works an impossibility."
"And that is exactly what I propose to persuade France to do, if possible; but we can talk that over better when we meet in Paris. And now, my Adelaide, good-night."
He clasped her hand and drew her towards him; for the fraction of a second she drew back, and then she yielded and submitted to his kiss; but when the door had closed behind him, she drew the palm of her hand across her lips with a gesture almost of disgust, and said:
"No, my Victor; that must be the last. You cannot afford a Princess of Bourbon now. I sold myself for statecraft which is craft no longer; and, besides, there is another now. Ah, well, I wonder what will happen in Paris? And Sophie Valdemar, too, and the count! Altogether, I think we shall make quite an interesting little party when we meet in la Ville Lumière."
CHAPTER XI
Ten days had passed since Victor Fargeau's conversation with Adelaide de Condé in Vienna. He had adhered to the decision that he had come to so suddenly under the spell of her wonderful eyes.
He had no family ties now. His mother had died several years before. His two sisters had married Frenchmen, and migrated with their husbands into Normandy. The estate in Alsace, which should have been his own patrimony, was lost, and the German Jew, Weinthal, held not only that but the honour of his family, the good name of his dead father, in his hands. So he had decided to cut himself adrift from his native land until it had become once more a part of France.
He had written to Petersburg and resigned his position on the Diplomatic Staff, and he had also written to headquarters resigning his commission, and telling enough of his father's story to show that, since it was impossible for him now, as a man with a tarnished name, to hold his head up amongst his brother officers, there was nothing left for him but retirement into civil life.
A reply had come back, to the effect that the circumstances of his very painful case were under consideration, and that he need not report himself for duty until the general of the division to which he was attached had given his decision.
He knew that this was equivalent to an acceptance of his resignation. Even though he had asked for it, his dismissal galled him. He knew perfectly well that he had only entered the German army for the purposes of revenge, that in honest language he could only be described as a traitor and a spy—a man who had deliberately abused his position and the confidence of his superiors to get possession of plans of fortresses, details of manœuvres, lines of communication, available rolling-stock, and points of entry which had been selected for possible invasion.
He had, in fact, done more than even Dreyfus was ever accused of, and now, since everything else was lost, he was determined to take the last step. He would throw off his enforced allegiance to Germany; he would take the wreck of his fortunes with him to France, and he would offer her his services and his information. He knew well enough that they would not be rejected, as his father's priceless discovery had been. What he possessed would be bought eagerly by any of the chancelleries of Europe. The French Ministry of War would not refuse his services as it had refused his father's.
Even now some means might be found to checkmate these English-Americans. Already a scheme, daring and yet practicable, was shaping itself in his mind, and if that succeeded he might still achieve the one desire of his life and call Adelaide de Condé his own. For the present, although she had said nothing at that last interview, he felt that a change had come into their relationship. Her words had been more formal and more measured, and her last kiss colder than before. He felt that he was on his trial; that if he did not achieve something great she was lost to him.
And then there was the other—this English-American—who had not only got the Great Secret, but the millions to put it into practice. He knew her high ambitions. He knew that if she had to choose between love for a man, and the fulfilment of a great project, the man would have but little chance. But he had loved her since he knew the meaning of the word, and he had resolved to risk everything that was left to him to win back what had once been within his grasp. If in the end he failed and the other man won—well, so much the worse for the other man.
And then there was Sophie Valdemar. Even if this English-American did take Adelaide from him——But that was another matter, the fragment of a possible destiny which still lay upon the knees of the gods. If the worst came to the worst, what would Russia not give to know all that he knew and all that was contained in the only legacy that his father had left him.
So thinking, he travelled to Paris, leaving his uniform behind him, and dressed just as an ordinary man about town, quietly, but with exquisite care and neatness.
As soon as he had settled himself in a modest hotel in one of the streets of the Avenue de l'Opé, he wrote a discreetly-worded note to one of the secretaries of the Ministry of War, a former schoolfellow of his, with whom he had had previous communications of a confidential sort, asking him to arrange a private interview for him with the Minister at the earliest possible date, and, if possible, to dine with him the next evening. The next morning he called to pay his respects to Madame de Bourbon and the marquise at the hotel they had taken in the Avenue Neuilly.
He met the marquise alone in the salon. She received him quietly and almost coldly—but this he had expected.
"So you have finally decided," she said. "I thought from your letter that you would do so. How very different you looken civile! Really, although we naturally hate the sight of them, still, it must be admitted that those German uniforms do make a good-looking man look his best."
"Yes," replied Victor, choking down his chagrin as best he might; "to a certain extent it is true, after all, that the feathers make the bird, and so, of course, the clothes make the man. Still, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to tolerate me for the future without my German plumage. As you say, I have made my decision. I have broken with Germany for ever. Henceforth, I am a son of France—and, Adelaide, I have come to ask a daughter of France to help me to serve her."
"Of France!" she echoed, drawing herself up, and looking at him with a half-angry glint in her eyes, "of what France? Of this nation of snobs and shopkeepers, ruled by a combination of stockbrokers, heavy-witted bourgeoisie and political adventurers? or the old France—my France—the France of my ancestors, as it was in the days when the great Louis said: 'L'état c'est moi'? The one is not worth saving; the other might be worth restoring."
"But this France of the bourgeoisie must first be saved, so that we may make out of it the foundation for the throne of the great Louis. If we succeed, Adelaide, as it is still possible that we may do, we shall be strong enough to abolish the salic law and to enthrone you as Empress of the French."
"Of France, if you please! My ancestors were Kings of France. Even the Corsican dared only style himself Emperor of the French. You seem to forget that I am a daughter of the Bourbons, a scion of the older line, and that therefore France is my personal heritage. But come," she went on, with a swift change of tone and manner, "it will be time enough to talk about that when I am nearer to my inheritance than I am now. You said that you wanted my help—how? What can I do now, left alone as I am?"
"Not quite alone, Adelaide," he said, half reproachfully. "Have I not given up everything, even, as some would say, sacrificed honour itself, to help you to win back that which is your own by every right? And you can help me as no one else can. I have a friend in the Ministry of War—Gaston Leraulx, one of the secretaries. We were school-fellows and college friends. He is to dine with me to-night, and he will arrange an interview with the Minister of War. I shall ask you to come with me to that interview."
"What do you say, Victor? You wish me, a princess of the House of Bourbons to enter the bureau of one of these ministers—these politicians who are ruling in the place of the old noblesse—men whom we might perhaps have employed as lacqueys?"
"That is true," he replied; "but remember, Adelaide, that time brings its differences. My ancestors were nobles when yours were kings. If the old order of things is to be restored we must use these people as means to an end. I ask you to come with me to the Minister of War, so that you may help me to convince him, from your own knowledge, of the terrible mistake that he made when he refused to entertain the project that my father placed before him.
"You can tell him that strange story of how my father in his despair committed his body and his secret to the sea; how the sea gave it up into the hands of our worst enemies—the enemies of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow—England and America; and how, even now, they are spending their millions upon that upon which France would not even risk a few paltry thousands.
"When I place my papers before him he will see that they are identical with my father's, and I shall give him others which will make it impossible for him to doubt my faith; and you, you will be there to help me with your knowledge, with the prestige of your name, and with your beauty. The General may be all that you think him, but do not forget that he is a Frenchman, and that all Frenchmen who are not quite mad respect and admire at least two things——"
"And those are—what?" she said, taking a couple of steps towards him, and speaking in a low, earnest tone. "Am I to understand you to mean that this man—I know that he is one of the most able men that France can boast of—might perhaps be made an instrument of?"
"I mean," said Victor, taking her hand unresistingly, "that General Ducros is himself an aristocrat, a man whose forefathers served yours well; that he is a Frenchman whose spirit will recognise yours as being of similar lineage, whose eyes will not be blind, and whose ears will not be deaf. Surely, Adelaide, you see by this time what I mean: you see how, with you, I may succeed in everything, and, without you, I may fail. And, remember, if I fail there is an end of everything. This is our last hope. If it is not realised, these accursed English and Americans will be masters of the situation, masters of the world, indeed. Surely, Adelaide, for the sake of all that is past and all that may be to come you will not say no?"
"No, Victor; I will not," she replied, still allowing her hand to rest in his, and yet thinking the while of that other man, whose face was ever present to her eyes, and whose voice was ever echoing in her ears. "I will visit this Minister of yours with you. His name is good, and perhaps he may not be unworthy of it. At any rate, he is not disgraced by one of those new titles of the First or Second Empire. If I can help you I will; trust me for that. When it is arranged send me a telegram and our carriage is at your disposal. Ah, who is this?"
At this moment the door opened, and the lacquey announced:
"Monsieur le Comte de Valdemar; Ma'm'selle la Comtesse de Valdemar."
Victor Fargeau saw at a glance that the count and Sophie were dressed in half-mourning, and instantly divined that their visit was one of condolence. This, of course, gave him a most excellent excuse to make his adieux.
There was just a glimmer of taunting mockery in Sophie's brilliant eyes as she recognised the dashing young cavalry officer in the sober garb of civil life, but it passed like a flash, and as they shook hands she said:
"A most unexpected meeting, captain!" And then, with a look of frank challenge, "No doubt it is most important business that has brought you to Parisen civile."
"It is not without importance, countess, at least to my own poor and presently insignificant self. Whether," he went on, with a swift involuntary glance at Adelaide, who was receiving the condolences of the count, "it will ever be of importance to others is one of the secrets of fate; and, if so, you, who are no doubt justly credited with knowing half the secrets of Europe, will probably be one of the first to discover the fact."
"I wonder whether that is intended for a compliment or the reverse," said Sophie, with a look of challenge coming back into her eyes. "You see, captain, there are two sorts of people who are supposed to know everything—diplomatists and spies."
Her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she spoke the last word.
Victor did his best to preserve his composure, but Sophie's watchful eyes saw that the shot had gone home; still, the next moment he replied, with the stiff wooden-doll bow of the German officer, and without a tremor in his voice:
"It would be quite impossible that mam'selle could be anything but one of the two."
As he raised his head she looked into his eyes again, and laughed outright.
"Well hit, captain! that was very nicely put. I think you and I would make better friends than enemies, and in proof of my belief, let me tell you a secret which is not of Europe. An Anglo-American syndicate has for some reason or other leased several square miles round the Magnetic Pole in Boothia Land, British North America."
"Really! And might I ask why? It doesn't seem to be a very profitable investment in landed property."
"Who knows?" said Sophie, with a little shrug of her shapely shoulders. "These English and Americans, you know, are always doing the maddest things. I shouldn't wonder if they intended to turn theAurora borealisinto electric light for Chicago."
"Nor I," said Victor. "And now, if you will permit me, I must say Au revoir."
"I wonder how much our ex-captain really knows, and if my dear friend Adelaide here knows anything or not," said Sophie, in her soul, when Victor had made his adieux and the door closed behind him.
CHAPTER XII
It was not until four days later that Victor's friend in the Ministry of War was able to procure an appointment for him with General Ducros. Pressure of business was Captain Gaston Leraulx' explanation, and it was an honest one. What he did not know was that on the evening of the day when Count Valdemar and his daughter paid their visit of condolence to Adelaide de Condé, General Ducros dined with them.
They had no other guest, for the best of reasons. Countess Sophie, the omniscient, by means of a happy accident, had got a fairly clear idea of the outlines of the Great Storage Scheme. The servants of the White Tzar are everywhere, known or unknown, generally the latter. A Russian trapper happened to meet a French-Canadian voyageur in Montreal when Shafto Hardress was making his negotiations with the Canadian Government. They had a few drinks and a talk over the extraordinary deal that he had made with the Canadian Government, a deal which had been reported and commented on by the Canadian and American journals with the usual luxuriance of speculative imagination. The same night the voyageur and the trapper, both men who were living on the products of their season's hunting and trapping, cabled practically the same details to Paris and Petersburg.
The voyageur's telegram had gone to General Ducros; and he, with the instinct of a soldier and a statesman, had instantly connected it with the greatest mistake that he had made in his life, his refusal to entertain the proposal which Doctor Emil Fargeau had laid before him. He saw that he had refused even to examine a scheme which this Anglo-American syndicate had somehow got hold of and thought it worth their while to spend thousands of pounds even in preliminary development. As he said to himself when the unwelcome news came to him, "I have committed a crime—for I have made a mistake, and for statesmen mistakes are something worse than crimes."
As soon as the Russian trapper's message had reached Count Valdemar, he immediately discussed it with his daughter, who over and over again had given proof of an almost clairvoyant insight into the most difficult and intricate concerns of international diplomacy. The moment she saw it her instinct led her back to the reception at the German Embassy in Petersburg.
"It was all very easy, after all, general," she said, when the dinner was over, and the coffee and liqueurs were on the table. "If you will pardon me saying so, it is in cases like this that the intuition of the woman outstrips the logical faculty of the man. You have asked me how I discovered the connection between the interview between yourself and Doctor Fargeau, which, as you say, ended somewhat unhappily for France, and this extraordinary purchase of a seemingly worthless landed property by Viscount Hardress."
"Ah yes," said the general, knocking the ash off his cigarette. "Statesmen are not supposed to make mistakes, but to you, Ma'm'selle, and Monsieur le Comte, I must confess, to my most intense chagrin, the man was an Alsatian, and had accepted the new order of things in the provinces, he was a German subject, and his son was a German officer on the general staff. What could I think?"
"My dear general," replied Sophie, after a long whiff at her yellow Russian cigarette, "your conclusions were perfectly just under the circumstances. But when you have had your interview with Captain Fargeau and my dear friend the marquise, I think you will find that, after all, they were erroneous. Do you not think so, papa?"
"I fancy," replied the count, slowly, "that when you have made your explanations to the general, he will agree with you."
"Very well, then, general, I will spin my little thread before you, and you shall see whether it holds together or not. First, there was that snatch of a conversation that I heard at the German Embassy reception in Petersburg. Captain Fargeau was talking with the late Prince de Condé, and he was called away by one of the servants. From another source I knew afterwards that he had received a telegram from Strassburg. He came back, and made a pretence of dancing with my very dear friend, Adelaide de Condé. They went out into the winter garden, just in front of myself and my partner. I heard him tell her that 'he' had succeeded, and gone to Paris.
"You have told me of his father's visit to you. The chief part of his scheme was the building of these works round the Magnetic Pole in Boothia Land. The prince and Adelaide go to a little out-of-the-way place in Germany, called Elsenau. The fashionable papers told us that. They also told us that Lord Orrel and his daughter were there; and almost the same day arrives this Viscount Branston, Lord Orrel's son. The prince suddenly and mysteriously dies—as they say, from the bursting of a blood-vessel on the brain. Of course, all the papers tell us of that, and also that Viscount Branston goes to Vienna and brings back Madame de Bourbon, who is here now, in Paris, with Adelaide.
"Before this, you and my father have the telegrams from our good friends out yonder in Canada. Then the Canadian and American papers confirm this, and tell us that this same Viscount Branston has leased this very spot of seemingly worthless land, which was, as you tell us, essential to the carrying out of Emil Fargeau's scheme, and that a great Anglo-American syndicate has been formed to build an observatory there, or a central station for the control of wireless telegraphy throughout the world; and so on. No doubt the newspaper stories are as familiar to you as they are to us. Now, general, do you see the connection between that scrap of conversation I heard in Petersburg, and the purchase of that patch of snow-covered rock in Boothia Land?"
"Ma'm'selle," replied the general, "it is not a thread, but a chain, and there is not a weak link in it. It is perfectly plain now that there is a connection between this German officer, at present on leave in Paris, and these English and Americans who have somehow become possessed of the details of the scheme which I so unfortunately rejected. Still, until we have heard what Captain Fargeau and your friend the Marquise de Montpensier, whom I am to have the honour of receiving to-morrow, have to say, it would not, I think, be wise to conclude that they have entered into a conspiracy with those whom I may describe as our common enemies."
"That, general, I do not believe for a moment," said the count. "All their interests lie the other way. They have as much reason to dislike England and America as we have; and, until I know to the contrary, I shall prefer to believe that the Marquise de Montpensier, a daughter of the Bourbons, is a friend to France, and therefore, through France, to Russia."
"And I believe that too," said Sophie. "As far as England and America are concerned, the interests of France and Russia are identical. If these arrogant Anglo-Saxons are ever to be put into their proper place, Russia and France must do it: and, to begin with, by some means or other, this scheme must be frustrated. And now, general, I have given you a little information to-night, and I am going to ask a little favour in return."
"It shall be granted, if possible. Ma'm'selle has only to ask it."
"There is, I believe," said Sophie, putting her arms on the table, "a little apartment leading out of your own bureau at the Ministry of War?"
General Ducros could not help raising his eyelids a little, for he knew that neither Sophie nor her father had ever been in that room, but he dropped them again instantly, and said:
"That is perfectly true, ma'm'selle; it is a little apartment, devoted to my own private use. In fact, to tell you the truth, I am sometimes there when it is convenient for my secretary to prove by ocular demonstration to some more or less important personage that I am not at home, and that, in consequence of my unavoidable absence, an undesirable interview has to be postponed."
"Exactly," laughed Sophie. "Such things are not unknown elsewhere; and I am going to ask you, general, for the use of that room during your interview to-morrow with the Marquise de Montpensier and Captain Fargeau. In other words, I wish to be present at the interview without doing anything to interrupt the smooth course of the proceedings."
"Ma'm'selle knows so much already that there is no reason why she should not know more," replied the general, not very cordially; "but, of course, it is understood, as a matter of honour between ourselves, that in this matter we are allies, as our countries are."
"Undoubtedly," replied the count. "It would, indeed, be mutually impossible for it to be otherwise."
"Then," said Sophie, "we will consider that a bargain. My father and I will call shortly before the captain and Adelaide reach the Ministry, and afterwards——"
"And afterwards, my dear general, if you will allow me to interrupt you," said the count, "I would suggest that we should have a little dinner here, to which Sophie will invite Madame de Bourbon and the marquise, as well as Captain Fargeau; a dinner which, if you will permit me to say so, may possibly be of historic interest; an occasion upon which, perhaps, the alliance between France and Russia will be cemented by a mutual agreement and arrangement to outwit these English-Americans, and secure the world-empire for France and Russia."
General Ducros assented. He saw that, owing to the fatal mistake he had made when he rejected Emil Fargeau's scheme, he was now, thanks to the subtle intellect of Sophie Valdemar, forced to share the possibility of obtaining that world-empire with Russia, the ally whose friendship had already cost France so dearly, an ally to whom France had paid millions for a few empty assurances and one or two brilliant scenes in the international spectacular drama. No one knew better than he did how worthless this alliance really was to France, and that night he reproached himself bitterly for letting slip the chance of making France independent of her blood-sucking ally. Still, by an extraordinary combination of chance and skill, Sophie Valdemar had got the necessary knowledge of the great secret, and, perforce, he had to share it with her and Russia.
Punctually at eleven o'clock the next morning Adelaide de Condé and Victor Fargeau were admitted to the bureau of the Minister of War. The interview was very different from the one that he had granted to the man whom his scepticism had practically driven to his death, and so placed the great secret in the hands of his country's enemies. It was also much shorter. When, at the outset, the general had addressed Victor as Captain Fargeau, he replied:
"Pardon, general, I am captain no longer, nor am I any longer a German. I have resigned. Henceforth I am a Frenchman in fact, as I have always been in heart. You would not believe that of my father, but I will prove it to you of myself."
"My dear sir," replied the general, "no one could be more delighted to hear such news as that than I; and I can promise you that, in that case, an appointment—not, of course, an acknowledged one, since you are not now legally a Frenchman—shall be placed at your disposal."
Adelaide turned her head away as he spoke, and her lips curled into a smile which made her look almost ugly. "So now he is to become a paid spy," she thought. "And he still considers that I am pledged to him. But what can I do till we have either succeeded or failed? Ah, if it were only the other one! If he were a Frenchman, or if only I could make him love me as I could—well, we shall see. After all, patriotism has its limits. France has broken its allegiance to my house. What do I owe it?"
General Ducros saw at a glance that the specifications which Victor handed to him were the duplicates of those which he had so unwisely and so unfortunately for himself and for France refused to accept from his father. If anything had been needed to convince him of the terrible error that he had made, Adelaide's story of the last night of her father's life would have done it.
"Monsieur," he said, laying his hand upon the papers, "I will confess that I have made a great mistake, even that I have committed a crime against France and your father. Alas, as we know now from the story that Ma'm'selle la Marquise has told us, he is dead; and it is I who, innocently and unknowingly, sent him to his death. I can do no more than admit my error, and promise you that every force at my command shall be used to repair it, if possible. These other documents, which you have been good enough to hand to me, I take, of course, as an earnest of your good faith and your devotion to France."
"I wonder what they are," said Sophie Valdemar, in her soul, as the Minister's words reached her ear through the closed door of the little private room. "An Alsatian, a German officer, Military Attaché at Petersburg, he resigns his commission, goes back to his French allegiance, and gives the general something which proves his good faith! Ah, perhaps a scheme of campaign—sketches of routes—details of mobilisation—plans of fortresses! We must fight Germany soon. I wonder whether I could persuade the good general to let me have a look at them, if they are anything of that sort."
While these thoughts were flashing through Sophie's mind, the general was saying:
"And now, monsieur, you mentioned a short time ago that you had a scheme for repairing the error which I have confessed. May I ask for an outline of it? I need hardly say that, if it is only feasible, France will spare neither money nor men to accomplish the object, and to regain what I have so deplorably lost."
"My scheme, general," said Victor, "is exceedingly simple. These English-Americans are going to erect storage works round the Magnetic Pole, which, as of course you know, is situated in the far north, in a sort of No-man's Land, untrodden by human feet once in half-a-century. Let France fit out an Arctic expedition of two ships. Let them be old warships—as theAlertandDiscoverywere in the English expedition. Their mission will, of course, be a peaceful one, and their departure will cause no comment save in the scientific papers, but in their holds the ships will carry the most powerful guns they can mount, ammunition, and——"
"Excellent!" interrupted the general, rising from his seat. "My dear monsieur, I congratulate you upon a brilliant idea. Yes, the expedition shall be prepared with all speed; the newspapers shall describe the ships as old ones, but the Minister of Marine and myself will arrange that they shall carry the best guns and the most powerful explosives that we have. They shall be manned by picked crews, commanded by our best officers; they shall sail for the North Pole, or thereabouts, as all these expeditions do, and they shall make a friendly call at Boothia Land. It will not be possible now before next summer because of the ice; but the same cause will delay our friends in building the storage works; and when our ships call and the works are well in progress—well, then, we will see whether or not our friends will yield to logic; and, if not, to force majeure. Is that your idea?"
"Exactly," replied Victor. "We will wait till the works are finished, say this time next year, or two years or three years, it matters nothing, and then we will take them. The expedition will carry men trained to do the work under my orders. I have the whole working of the apparatus in those papers. Once we possess the works we are masters of the world, because we shall be possessors of its very life. But before that there may be war—the nations of Europe fighting for the limbs of the Yellow Giant in the East. Germany, as you will see from those papers, is nearly ready. It is only a matter of a few months, and then she will make her first rush on France. England and America can be rendered helpless if we once seize the works, and Russia can, I presume, be trusted?"
"Without doubt," said the general. "Russia is our true and faithful ally."
"Yes," said Sophie again, in her soul; "provided she has a share in that Polar expedition, as she shall have."
CHAPTER XIII
Nearly a year had passed since General Ducros had dined with Count Valdemar and Ma'm'selle Sophie in Paris. It was Cowes week, and there was quite a cosmopolitan party at Orrel Court. Adelaide de Condé and Madame de Bourbon were the best of friends with Count Valdemar and Sophie. Clifford Vandel and Miss Chrysie were good friends with everybody, the latter especially good friends with Hardress, whose work was now rapidly approaching completion. In short, it was as charming a cosmopolitan party as you could have found on the Hampshire shore, or anywhere else; and none of the other guests of Lord Orrel, and there were several of them not unskilled in diplomacy, ever dreamt that under the surface of the smooth-flowing conversation, whether round the dinner-table at the Court, on theNadine, which ran down the Southampton Water every day that there was a good race on, or at Clifford Vandel's bungalow at Cowes, whose smoothly shaven lawn sloped down almost to the water's edge, lay undercurrents of plot and counterplot, the issue of which was the question whether the dominion of the world was to be committed to Anglo-Saxon or Franco-Slav hands.
One night—it was the evening after the great regatta—three conversations took place under the roof of Orrel Court, which the greatest newspapers of the two hemispheres would have given any amount of money to be able to report, since each of them was possibly pregnant with the fate of the world.
When Clifford Vandel came up from the smoking-room a little after eleven he found Miss Chrysie waiting for him in the sitting-room of the suite of apartments that had been given to them in the eastern wing of the old mansion.
"Don't you think you ought to be in bed, Chrysie, instead of sitting there smoking a cigarette, and—Why, what's the matter with you, girl?"
He had begun with something like a note of reproach in his voice, but the last words were spoken in a tone of tender concern.
She got up from her chair, went to the door, and shut it and locked it, and then, with her half-smoked cigarette poised between her fingers, her face pale, and her eyes aflame, she faced him and said, in low, quick-flowing tones:
"Poppa, can't you see what's the matter?—you, who can see things months before they happen, and make millions by gambling on them?—you who did up Morgan himself over that wireless telegraphy combine—can't you see what's going on right here just under your nose?"
"My dear Chrysie, what are you talking about? I've not noticed anything particular happening, except what's happened in the right way. What's the trouble?"
"The trouble's that Frenchwoman—that second edition of Marie Antoinette. Can't you see what she's doing every hour and day of her life? Can't you see that she's as beautiful as an angel, and—well, as clever as the other thing, and that she's just playing her hand for all she's worth to get the man I want—the man I half-promised myself to a year ago!"
"Perhaps I've been too busy about other matters, and perhaps I never expected anything of the sort," replied her father; "and anyhow, men are fools at seeing this kind of thing; but if that's so, and you really do want him, why not promise yourself altogether and fix things up? There's no man I'd sooner have for a son-in-law; and if you want him, and he wants you, why——"
"It's just there, poppa, that I'm feeling bad about it," she said, coming nearer to him, and speaking with a little break in her voice. "I'm not so sure that he does want me now—at least, not quite as badly as he did that time when he asked me first in Buffalo. Don't you see that Frenchwoman's bewitched him? And who could blame him, after all? What do all the society papers say about her? The most beautiful woman in Europe—the great-great-grand-daughter of Louis the Magnificent himself, with the noblest blood of France in her veins! How could any man with eyes in his head and blood in his heart resist her? Why, I could no more compare with her than——"
"Than a wild rose in one of these beautiful English lanes could compare with a special variety of an orchid in a hothouse; and I guess, Chrysie, that if I haven't made a great mistake about Shafto Hardress—if he does get a bit intoxicated with the scent of the orchid, if it comes to winning and wearing the flower, he'll take the wild rose. If he doesn't—well, I guess you'll do pretty well without him."
"But I just can't do without him, poppa. You are the only one I'd tell it to, but that's so; and before that Frenchwoman gets him I'd have her out and shoot her. Women in her country fight duels. And there's more to it than that," she went on, after a little pause.
"And what might that be, Miss Fire-eater?" said her father, half-laughing, half-seriously.
"I believe that she and that Russian girl, who goes languishing around Shafto when the marquise or myself isn't around, know more than they should do about this storage scheme. I don't say I've been listening—I wouldn't do it—no, not even for them; but sometimes you can't help hearing; and only the day before yesterday, out in the grounds there, I heard both of them, not to each other, but at different times to Count Valdemar, mention the name of Victor Fargeau; and you know who he is—son of the man whose remains Shafto picked up at sea—creator of this great scheme of yours—a Frenchman who was an officer in the German army. Now listen: both these women are friends of General Ducros, the French War Minister. France is sending out the Polar expedition this year that she has been preparing for months—you know that; so has Russia. Do you see what I mean now?"
"I guess you've got me on my own ground there, Chrysie," said her father, laying his hand across her shoulders, and drawing her towards him. "You were dead right when you said that a woman's intuition can sometimes see quicker and farther than a man's reason; but on that kind of ground I guess I can see as well as anyone. I admit that I have been wondering a bit why just this particular year France and Russia should be sending two Polar expeditions out; but it's pretty well sure that if you hadn't seen that this French marquise and the Russian countess were after the man you want—and the man you're going to get, too, if he's the man I think he is—I shouldn't have seen what I see now."
"And what's that, poppa?"
"They're not Polar expeditions at all, Chrysie; those ships are no more trying to go to the North Pole than they're trying to find the source of the Amazon. You got the key that opens the whole show when you heard them talking about Victor Fargeau. They're going to Boothia Land, that's where they're going to, and they're not going on what the Russians generally call a voyage of scientific discovery. I'd bet every dollar we've got in the Trust that those ships have guns on them, and there's going to be a fight for that Magnetic Pole after all. Anyhow, there's a cable going across to Doctor Lamson the first thing to-morrow morning. If there's anything like that going on, he can't be on guard any too soon. And now, little girl," he went on, raising his hand and putting it on her head, "you go to bed, and don't you worry about Frenchwomen or Russians. Shafto Hardress comes of good old English and American stock, and he's just as clever as he can be without being altogether American. Don't you worry about him. There's not going to be any trouble in his mind when he has to choose between a clean-blooded, healthy American girl and anyone else, even if she has got all the blood of all the Bourbons in her veins, or even if she is the daughter of Count Valdemar of Russia, whose ancestors, I guess, were half savages when yours were gentlemen. Don't you worry about that, little girl; you just go to bed, and dream about the time when you'll be sitting on a throne that Marie Antoinette's wasn't a circumstance to. Now, I have told you, and that's so. Good-night. I'll have a talk with Lord Orrel to-morrow morning, and see to the business part of the affair."
As Chrysie crossed the long corridor to her own room she caught a glimpse of a tall, graceful figure which she had come to know only too well, and the sweep of a long, trailing skirt, vanishing through a door which she knew led into Count Valdemar's dressing-room.
"That's Sophie," she said. "I wonder if she saw me. She's been with the marquise, I suppose; and now she's going to have a talk with her father, something like mine with poppa. It's mean to listen, and I couldn't do it if I wanted to, but I'd like to give some of those dollars that poppa's going to make out of this scheme to hear what she's going to say, or what she's been saying to the marquise. I reckon I could make some history out of it if I knew; but anyhow, there's going to be trouble with that Frenchwoman. I don't think so much about the Russian. I believe she wants to marry either Lord Orrel or poppa; she's just about as mean as she is pretty and clever. I'd just like to say that English swear-word about her."
Miss Chrysie said that, and many other things, in her soul that night after she had laid her head on her pillow; and, even after the demands of physical fatigue upon a perfectly healthy physique had compelled slumber, she dreamt of herself as a modern Juno, usurping the throne of Jove, and wielding his lightnings, with the especial object of destroying utterly from the face of the earth two young ladies, with whom she was living on apparent terms of the most perfect friendship, and who were even then resting their pretty heads on pillows just like hers under the same roof.
CHAPTER XIV
Sophie opened the door in answer to her father's murmured "entrez," and closed it very gently behind her. She had not noticed Chrysie as she slipped into her own room, for her back was towards her, and, happily, she had no suspicion whatever of the conclusions which Chrysie's love-sharpened eyes had enabled her to reach. If she had, some skilfully-devised accident would probably have happened. For though but two people among the guests at Orrel Court knew it, there were spies both inside and around the great house, unscrupulous agents of an unscrupulous government, who would have carried out their orders at all hazards. In fact, they had been brought there by Count Valdemar, at his daughter's suggestion, to assist in working out the most daring conspiracy that had ever been hatched at an English country house.
"Well, papa," said Sophie, in her soft Russian, as she took a cigarette, and dropped into an easy-chair with a motion that was almost voluptuous in its gracefulness, "now that these good people have gone to bed, we shall be able to have a little quiet talk. Are you still of opinion that the scheme that I sketched out is feasible?"
"Everything is feasible, my dear Sophie," replied her father, "provided only you have people of sufficient genius and boldness to carry it out. No doubt it would be possible with our own people, and those of the English sailors whom we have been able to bribe, to carry out that brilliant plan of yours, especially as you appear to have wrought such a magical transformation in the allegiance of this impressionable young engineer of yours on theNadine. Are you quite sure of him?"
"Sure of him!" said Sophie, in a voice that was little above a whisper, and leaning forward and looking at her father with a smile which made even him think her beauty almost repulsive for the moment. "Edward Williams is as much in love as Boris Bernovitch was, and is—although he is where he is. I have promised, as usual. He has believed me, as usual, just like any other fool of his sex. Day after day I have met him and talked with him in what he calls my adorable foreign English. I have given him rendezvous which would have startled my Lord Orrel and all his belongings out of that abominable, habitual calm of theirs, and perhaps procured me a request to leave the house immediately. I have fooled him out of his seven senses, and to-night I have performed the supreme sacrifice for Russia, and let him kiss me."
The cruelly smiling lips changed into an expression of contemptuous disgust as she said this, and the count replied, coldly:
"Not a pleasant duty, Sophie; but for Holy Russia her servants must do everything. That, as I have tried to teach you almost as soon as you could speak, is our duty, almost our religion. Our fortune, our lives, our everything must be devoted to the emperor and to Holy Russia—soon now, I hope, to be mistress of the world. You as a woman, and a beautiful woman, have your weapons; I as a man, and a diplomatist, have mine. It is your duty to use yours with as little scruple as I use mine.
"And so you really think," he went on, after a little pause, "that it will be possible to capture theNadine, with all her noble and gallant company on board, and compel her to join our Russian expedition to Boothia Land. Certainly, it would be a brilliant triumph if we could. We should have all the heads of the great Trust at our mercy—Lord Orrel, his son, and this most objectionably straightforward Clifford Vandel, who, it would appear, has so vastly improved upon the original scheme. Then we should have the womankind too—Lady Olive, Miss Vandel, and the beautiful marquise herself, always dangerous power that might work against us. By the way, Sophie, has it struck you that the young viscount is wavering in his allegiance to the fair American under the influence of the beautiful daughter of the Condés?"
"As well ask me whether I am a woman, father," she replied, with a low, wicked-sounding laugh. "Have I no eyes in my head? Did not this fair American interfere with my plan for securing the noble Shafto to ourselves by making him fall in love with her before I saw him, and have I not done everything, all the thousand and one little things that a woman can do, to help my dear friend the marquise to the attainment of her very evident desires? In other words, have I forgotten the lessons that you have been teaching me since you began to train me to think myself not a girl with a heart and a soul, and living blood in her veins, but only a human machine, fair to look upon, animated by a brain which knows no other duty than the service of our Holy Russia? You know that if I had loved this man myself it would have been just the same. I should have done exactly as I have done,—at least, I believe so."
"Ah," laughed the count, softly, "that is the problem, my dear Sophie; and that, I tell you frankly, has always been my fear for you. You are young, brilliant, and beautiful; and I've always been a little afraid that out of some of all your admirers whom your smiles have brought to your feet there might be one whom you might love; and when a woman loves she pities, and pity and diplomacy have as much to do with each other as charity and business. Still, I am not without hopes that some day you will meet some worthy son of Russia; and remember, my Sophie, that, if we succeed in this, if we place the control of the elixir vitæ of the world in the hand of Russia, you might look even near the throne itself."
"And I most certainly should," said Sophie, throwing her head back. "I tell you frankly, papa, I'm not doing all this for nothing. I am not forgetting that I am a woman, with all a woman's natural feelings and inspirations, all her possible loves and hopes and pities, only for the sake of serving even Russia. If I succeed I shall have my reward, and it shall be a splendid one."
"And you will have well deserved it," said the count, looking with something more than fatherly pride on the beautiful daughter who had learnt the lessons of what he was pleased to call diplomacy so well. "Still, I cannot disguise from myself that this last scheme of yours is, to say the least of it, a desperate one; for it amounts to nothing less than a kidnapping of one of the best-known noblemen and statesmen in England, his son and daughter, one of the wealthiest and best-known American financiers in the world and his daughter; to say nothing of one of the Ministers of the Tsar and his daughter. I need hardly remind you, of course, that the failure of such a venture would never be forgiven in Petersburg. I need not tell you that the Little Father never pardons mistakes, and, besides, my dear Sophie, have you quite satisfied yourself that such a very extreme measure is absolutely necessary?"
"My dear papa," said Sophie, getting up from her chair, and raising her voice ever so little, "in the first place, there will be—there can be no mistake about it; and, in the second place, I assure you that it is absolutely necessary if Russia is to have undisputed control of the Storage Works. You see, the outside world knows absolutely nothing about these works. There have been all sorts of stories circulated about them, but no one who has actually seen them has said or written a word about them. In fact, as far as we know, only two men have been there and come back—Viscount Branston and Mr Vandel; Dr Lamson is there still. How do we know what means of defence they've got? They might be able even now, from what Victor Fargeau and General Ducros told us, to demagnetise our ships, stop our engines from working and our guns from shooting; or, on the other hand, what would be almost as bad, this Lamson might blow up the works and shatter every plan we've got—perhaps ruin all prospects of the invasion, too, unless we have some means of persuading him not to use his power. What better means could we have than the possession of the heads of the concern?
"I have heard hints, too, that he is not without hopes of winning the fair Lady Olive some day, when he becomes one of the masters of the world. Granted now that it is within our power to do what we please with all of them, or, if you like to put it diplomatically, with the heads of this gigantic conspiracy against the peace and security of the world, and plot to destroy the independence of the nations and the freedom of humanity, for it is nothing else, should we not be justified in using any and every means—yes," she went on, her voice hardening, "even to the very last means of all, to snatch this tremendous power out of the hands of these sordid English and Americans and give it into those of Holy Russia. It is kidnapping, piracy, invasion of friendly territory—everything, I grant you, that is criminal under the law of nations; but remember it is also a struggle for the command of the life-force of the world—which means practically the control of the world itself and all that therein is."
"And," said the count, smiling, "I suppose you would say that, as these people are our natural enemies, with whom we shall very soon be at war—'à la guerre comme à la guerre'—I suppose you mean that when we have got theNadineand her noble company we shall use them as hostages to prevent any accidents happening to our little Polar expedition. Really, my dear Sophie, your methods have suddenly become almost mediæval; still, if they are only successful, they will be none the less effective for that. Let me see now," he went on, leaning back in his chair and putting the tips of his fingers together, "I wonder if I can find any flaw in the arrangements. You know, it is quite essential, my dear Sophie, that there should not be any."
"My dear papa," she replied, smiling, and leaning her back against the old carved mantelpiece, "try, by all means. If you cannot find one, I don't think there can be much chance of its being anything but practically perfect."
"Very well," said the count, lighting a fresh cigarette. "In two or three days' time, when the regattas are over, the house-party at Orrel Court will break up, and a few days after that, say a week in all, Lord Orrel, with his son and daughter, and the American and his daughter, and Ma'm'selle la Marquise as Lady Olive's guest, are taking a trip across the Atlantic in theNadine, partly in the course of business and partly on pleasure bent; Madame de Bourbon and her maids return to Paris; theVlodoyaputs into Southampton the day theNadinesails, to take us on our trip to the Mediterranean. Your good friend the lieutenant has informed you that, although theNadinecan make twenty knots on an emergency, she will only take a leisurely summer trip across the Atlantic to Boston, at about twelve or fifteen. He has given you a chart of the course which she will take. He has also promised you that at a certain spot in mid-Atlantic there shall be a little accident to her engines which enable theVlodoyato overtake her. TheVlodoya, commanded and well manned by good servants of the empire, with a couple of three-pounders and a Maxim in case of accident, will overhaul her and give her the alternative of surrender or sinking. That is where the piracy will begin, I suppose."
Sophie nodded, and, laughing, replied in English: "Yes, right there—as our American beauty, as Lord Hardress thinks her, would say. TheNadineis unarmed, and, of course, resistance will be useless; in fact, it would simply be the merest folly. His lordship will accept us and a portion of theVlodoya'screw as self-invited guests; we shall then steam away together, not to Boston, but to the rendezvous with our little expedition, and once we join forces—well, the thing is practically done."
"I agree so far," said her father; "still, there are one or two accidents that we have not yet taken into account. Suppose, for instance, one of these detestable British cruisers, which seem to be everywhere, should happen to be there just then; or that even one of the big liners should come in sight at the critical moment. It seems to me that, for the present at least, secrecy is above all things essential, for if the news of—well, such an outrage, did get back to Europe, you know perfectly well that Russia would of necessity disown us, and that we and all on board theVlodoyawould simply be treated as common pirates."
"So I suppose," said Sophie, coolly; "but I have provided for that, because the day and place of rendezvous have been arranged so as to avoid the possibility of meeting any of the regular liners, and I have been careful to ascertain that no British warship will just then be under orders to cross the Atlantic, either from the North American station or from England. As for the piracy, I don't think we need trouble ourselves about that. Before many weeks France must forestall Germany's attack; Russia will, as we say, maintain the attitude of benevolent neutrality until she hears that we have got the works, then she will demand the surrender of the British concessions in China which conflict with her interests, and there will be war, and our actions, however drastic, will become legal under the law of war. In fact, my dear papa, as far as I can see, there is really only one possibility that I have not reckoned with, and that, as far as I can see, is an impossibility."