By Wit of Woman, Arthur W. Marchmont [best books to read in your 20s .TXT] 📗

oath filled me with genuine awe.

A tense pause followed, and then, recovering myself, I began to display anew my symptoms of hysterics. This time I was not going to get well enough to be able to speak of the matter farther; and I declared I must go away.

I was going to play a dangerous card; and when he asked me when he should see me again, I told him that if he would come that afternoon to me—I gave him Madame d'Artelle's address—I would tell him all I could.

I went away well satisfied with the result of my visit; and then planned my next step. It was to be a bold one; but the crisis called for daring; and if I was to win, I must force the moves from my side.

I walked back, glad of the exercise and the fresh air, and as I was passing through the Stadtwalchen, busily occupied with my thoughts, I met Count Karl. He was riding with an attendant and his look chanced to be in my direction. He stared as if trying to recollect me, then he bowed. I responded, but he passed on; and I concluded he had not placed my features in his muddled memory. But a minute later I heard a horse cantering after me; and he pulled up, dismounted, and held out his hand.

"You are Madame d'Artelle's friend, Miss Gilmore?"

"Yes," I said, scarce knowing whether to be glad or sorry he had come after me.

"May I walk a few steps with you?"

"Certainly, if you wish."

"Take the horses home," he said as he gave the reins to the servant. "I have been wishing to speak to you alone, Miss Gilmore. Shall we walk here?" and we turned into a side path at the end of which some nursemaids and children were gathered about the fountains.

He did not speak again for some moments, but kept staring at me with a directness which, considering all things, I found embarrassing.

"Would you mind sitting down here?" he asked, as we reached a seat nearly hidden by the shrubbery.

"Not in the least," I agreed; and down we sat.

"You will think this very singular of me," he declared after a pause.

"One person could not very well be plural," I said inanely; and he frowned at the irrelevant flippancy. "I am a student you know, and therefore appreciate grammatical accuracy."

"I wish to ask you some questions, if I may."

"They appear to be very difficult to frame. You may ask what you please."

"I wish you would smile," he said, so unexpectedly that I did smile. "It is perfectly marvellous," he exclaimed with a start.

I knew what that meant. In the old days he had talked a lot of nonsense about my smile.

"If I smile it is not at the waste of your life and its opportunities, Count Karl," I ventured.

"Opportunities!" he repeated with a laugh. "I have seized this one at any rate. I have been thinking about you ever since I saw you two days ago at Madame d'Artelle's."

"Why?" I asked pointedly.

"That is a challenge. I'll take it up. Because your name is Christabel. Is it really Christabel?"

"My name seems to cause considerable umbrage," I said, with a touch of offence. "Two days ago your brother not only doubted the Christabel, but wished to give me a fresh surname as well, von Decker or Discher, or Dreschler, or something."

He frowned again. "Gustav is a good fellow, but he should hold his tongue. You're so like her, you see, and yet so unlike, that——" he finished the sentence with a cut of his riding whip on his gaiters.

"I am quite content to be myself, thank you," I declared with a touch of coldness.

"Your voice, too. It's perfectly marvellous."

"May I ask what all this means?" I put the question very stiffly.

"Chiefly that I'm an idiot, I think. But I don't care. I'm long past caring. Life's only rot, is it?"

"Not for those who use it properly. It might be a glorious thing for a man in your position and with your future."

"Ah, you're young, you see, Miss Gilmore," he exclaimed, with the self-satisfaction of a cynic. "I suppose I thought so once, but there's nothing in it."

"There's opium," I rapped out so sharply that he gave a start and glanced at me. Then he smiled, heavily.

"Oh, you've found that out, eh; or somebody has told you? Yes, I can't live without it now, and I don't want to try. What does it matter?" and he jerked his shoulders with a don't-care gesture.

"I should be ashamed to say that."

"I suppose you would. I suppose you would. I should have been, at one time, when I first began; but not now. Besides, it suits everybody all right. You see, you don't understand."

"I have no intention of trying it."

"No, don't. It's only hell a bit before one's time. But I didn't stop you to talk about this. I don't quite know why I did stop you now;" and he ran his hand across his forehead as if striving to remember.

A painful gesture, almost pathetic and intensely suggestive.

"I suppose it was just a wish to speak to you, that's all," he said at length, wearily. "Oh, I know. You reminded me so much of—of another Christabel of the name you mentioned, Christabel von Dreschler, that I wondered if you could be any relation. You are an American, are you not?"

"Yes. But that is not an American name."

"But she was American. I knew her in New York years ago. Lord, what long years ago. You are not a relation of hers?"

"I have no relative of that name, Count Karl."

"I wish you had been one."

"Why?"

"That's just what I've been asking myself these two days. It wouldn't have been any good, would it? And yet—" he sighed—"yet I think I should have been drawn to speak pretty freely to you."

"About what?"

He turned at the pointed question and looked quizzically at me. "I wonder. You're so like her, you see."

"Were you in love with her, then?"

He started resentfully at the thrust. Coming from me it must have sounded very much like impertinence.

"Miss Gilmore, I——" then he smiled in his feeble, nothing-matters manner. "Of course that's a question I can't answer, and you oughtn't to ask. But life's much too stupid for one to take offence when it isn't meant. And I don't suppose you meant any, did you?"

"No, on the contrary. I should very much like to be your friend," I said, very earnestly.

"Would you? I daresay you would. Lots of people would like to be the friend of the Duke Ladislas' eldest son. If they only knew! What humbug it all is."

"I am not a humbug," I protested.

"I daresay you have a motive in that clever little brain of yours. No clever people do anything without one, and they both agree you're clever and sharp. I wonder what it is. Tell me."

"'They both?'" I repeated, catching at his words.

His face clouded with passing doubt and then cleared as he understood. "I'm getting stupid again; but you don't get stupid. You know what Henriette and Gustav are in my life. You've spotted it, of course. It saves a heap of trouble to have some one to think for you. You mayn't believe it—you like to think for yourself; but it does, a regular heap of bother. And after all, the chief thing in life is to dodge trouble, isn't it?"

"No." I said it with so much energy that he laughed.

"That's only your point of view. You're American, you see. But I'm right. I hate taking trouble. Of course I know things. They think I don't, but I do. And I don't care."

"What things do you know?"

He stopped hitting his boots with his whip and looked round at me, paused, and then shook his head slowly. "You don't understand, and it wouldn't do you any good if you did."

But I did understand and drove the spur in. "I don't understand one thing—why the elder son should think his chief object in life is to make way for the younger brother."

He leant back on the seat and laughed. "They're right. You have a cute little head and no mistake. That's just it. I'm not surprised Gustav warned me against you. But he needn't. I shouldn't let you worry me into things. I'm glad I spoke to you, though. You've got old fox Erlanger round that little finger of yours, too, haven't you?"

"I was governess to General von Erlanger's daughter."

"And played chess with the old boy. I know;" and he laughed again. "And he sent you to look after Henriette, eh?"

"No. I knew Madame d'Artelle in Paris, years ago; and I went to her thinking her influence would help me."

"Did you? I'm not asking. But if you did, you can't be so clever as they think. She hasn't any influence with any one but me—and I don't count. I never shall either."

"Whose fault is that but your own?"

"I don't want to. I don't care. If I did care, of course——" The momentary gleam of energy died out in another weary look and wave of the hand. He waited and then asked. "But won't you tell me that motive of yours, for wanting to be my friend, you know?"

"I did not say I had one."

"I hoped you might want me to do something for you."

"Why?"

"Because you might do something for me in return."

"I'll promise to do that in any case."

"Ah, they all say that. The world's full of unselfish people willing to do things for a Duke's son," he said, lazily.

"What is it you wish me to do?"

"You have friends in America, of course?"

"Yes."

"Do you think they could find that other girl—the one you're like, Christabel von Dreschler?"

"Yes, I've no doubt they could."

"Well, I'd like to hear of her again."

"Would you like her to know what your life is and what you have become?"

That made him wince.

"By God, that hurts!" he muttered, and he leant back, put his hand to his eyes, and sat hunched up in silence. Presently he sighed. "You're right. I'm only a fool, am I?"

"If she cared for you, it might have hurt her to know," I said.

"Don't, please. You make me think; and I don't want to think."

"If she loved you then, she would scarcely love you now."

"Don't, I say, don't," he cried, with sudden vehemence. "You are so like her that to hear this from you is almost as if——I beg your pardon. But for a moment I believe I was almost fool enough to feel something. No, no; don't write or do any other silly thing of the sort. It doesn't matter;" and he tossed up his hands helplessly.

We sat for a few moments without speaking, and presently he began to fumble in his pocket. He glanced at me rather shamefacedly, and then with an air of bravado took out a phial of morphia pills.

"Since you know, it doesn't matter," he said, half-apologetically.

"It does matter very much," I declared, earnestly.

He held the little bottle making ready to open it, and met my eyes. "Why?"

"Would you take it if she were here?"

"I don't know;" and he heaved a deep sigh.

"Think that she is here, and then you daren't take it."

He laughed. "Daren't I?" and he partly unscrewed the cap.

I put my hand on his arm. "For her sake," I said.

"It means hours of hell to me if I don't."

"It means a life of hell if you do."

"I must."

"For her sake," I pleaded again, and held out my hand for the phial.

"You would torture me?"

"Yes, for your good."

The struggle in him was acute and searching. "It's no good; I can't," he murmured, his gaze on the phial.

I summoned all the will power at my command and forced him to meet my eyes. "For her sake; as if she were here; give it me," I said.

"I shall hate you if you make me."

"For her sake," I repeated. We looked each into the other's eyes, until I had conquered.

"I suppose I must," he murmured with a sigh; and