The Puppet Crown, Harlod MacGrath [best new books to read .TXT] 📗

should become void, that my conscience acquits me of dishonor. For love of you I have thrown honor to the winds. But do I regret it? No. For I am mad, and being mad, I am not capable of reason. I have broken all those ties which bind a man's respect to himself. I have burned all bridges, but I laugh at that. It is only with the knowledge that your love is mine that I can hold high my head.

"As the princess in you is proud, so is the man in me. A princess? That is nothing; I love you. Were you the empress of all the Russias, the most unapproachable woman in the world, I should not hesitate to profess my love, to find some means of declaring it to you. I love you. To what further depths can I fall to prove it?" Again he sought the window, and leaned heavily on the sill. He waited, as a man waits for an expected blow.

As she listened a delicious sensation swept through her heart, a sensation elusive and intangible. She surrendered without question. At this moment the Eve in her evaded all questions. Here was a man. The mood which seized her was as novel as this love which asked nothing but love, and the willingness to pay any price; and the desire to test both mood and love to their full strength was irresistible. She was loved for herself alone; hitherto men had loved the woman less and the princess more. To surrender to both mood and love, if only for an hour or a day, to see to what length this man would go at a sign from her.

He was almost her equal in birth; his house was nearly if not quite as old and honored as her own; in his world he stood as high as she stood in hers. She had never committed an indiscretion; passion had never swayed her; until now she had lived by calculation. As she looked at him, she knew that in all her wide demesne no soldier could stand before him and look straight into his eyes. So deep and honest a book it was, so easily readable, that she must turn to its final pages. Love him? No. Be his wife? No. She recognized that it was the feline instinct to play which dominated her. Consequences? Therein lay the charm of it.

"Patience, Monsieur," she said. "Did I promise to be your wife? Did I say that I loved you? ~Eh, bien~, the woman, not the princess, made those vows. I am mistress not only of my duchy, but of my heart." She ceased and regarded him with watchful eves. He did not turn. "Look at me, John!" The voice was of such winning sweetness that St. Anthony himself, had he heard it, must have turned. "Look at me and see if I am more a princess than a woman."

He wheeled swiftly. She was leaning toward him, her face was upturned. No jewel in her hair was half so lustrous as her eyes. From the threaded ruddy ore of her hair rose a perfume like the fabulous myrrhs of Olympus. Her lips were a cup of wine, and her eyes bade him drink, and the taste of that wine haunted him as long as he lived. He made as though to drain the cup, but Madame pushed down his arms, uttered a low, puzzled laugh, and vanished from the room. He was lost! He knew it; yet he did not care. He threw out his arms, dropped them, and settled his shoulders. A smile, a warm, contented smile, came into his face and dwelt there. For another such kiss he would have bartered eternity.

And Madame? Who can say?


CHAPTER XXII


IN WHICH MAURICE RECURS TO OFFENBACH

Midnight; the music had ceased, and the yellow and scarlet lanterns had been plucked from the autumnal hangings. The laughing, smiling, dancing women, like so many Cinderellas, had disappeared, and with them the sparkle of jewels; and the gallant officers had ridden away to the jingle of bit and spur. Throughout the courtly revel all faces had revealed, besides the happiness and lightness of spirit, a suppressed eagerness for something yet to come, an event surpassing any they had yet known.

Promptly at midnight Madame herself had dropped the curtains on the gay scene because she had urgent need of all her military household at dawn, when a picture, far different from that which had just been painted, was to be limned on the broad canvas of her dreams. Darkness and quiet had fallen on the castle, and the gray moon film lay on terrace and turret and tile.

In the guardroom, Maurice, his hands and feet still in pressing cords, dozed in his chair. He had ceased to combat drowsiness. He was worn out with his long ride, together with the chase of the night before; and since a trooper had relieved his mouth of the scarf so that he could breathe, he cared not what the future held, if only he might sleep. It took him a long time to arrive at the angle of comfort; this accomplished, he drifted into smooth waters. The troopers who constituted his guard played cards at a long table, in the center of which were stuck half a dozen bayonets, which served as candlesticks. They laughed loudly, thumped the board, and sometimes sang. No one bothered himself about the prisoner, who might have slept till the crack of doom, as far as they were concerned.

Shortly before the new hour struck, the door opened and shut. A trooper shook the sleeper by the sleeve. Maurice awoke with a start and gazed about, blinking his eyes. Before him he discovered Madame the duchess, Fitzgerald and Mollendorf, behind whom stood the Voiture-verse of a countess. The languor forsook him and he pulled himself together and sat as upright as his bonds would permit him. Something interesting was about to take place.

Madame made a gesture which the troopers comprehended, and they departed. Fitzgerald, with gloomy eyes, folded his arms across his breast, and with one hand curled and uncurled the drooping ends of his mustache; the Colonel frowned and rubbed the gray bristles on his upper lip; the countess twisted and untwisted her handkerchief; Madame alone evinced no agitation, unless the perpendicular line above her nose could have been a sign of such. This lengthened and deepened as her glance met the prisoner's.

He eyed them all with an indifference which was tinctured with contempt and amusement.

"Well, Monsieur Carewe," said Madame, coldly, "what have you to say?"

"A number of things, Madame," he answered, in a tone which bordered the insolent; "only they would not be quite proper for you to hear."

The Colonel's hand slid from his lip over his mouth; he shuffled his feet and stared at the bayonets and the grease spots on the table.

"Carewe," said Fitzgerald, endeavoring to speak calmly, "you have broken your word to me as a gentleman and you have lied to me."

The reply was an expressive monosyllable, "O!"

"Do you deny it?" demanded the Englishman.

"Deny what?" asked Maurice.

"The archbishop," said Madame, "assumed the aggressive last night. To be aggressive one must possess strength. Monsieur, how much did he pay for those consols? Come, tell me; was he liberal? It is evident that you are not a man of business. I should have been willing to pay as much as a hundred thousand crowns. Come; acknowledge that you have made a bad stroke." She bent her head to one side, and a derisive smile lifted the corners of her lips.

A dull red flooded the prisoner's cheeks. "I do not understand you."

"You lie!" Fitzgerald stepped closer and his hands closed menacingly.

"Thank you," said Maurice, "thank you. But why not complete the melodrama by striking, since you have doubled your fists?"

Fitzgerald glared at him.

"Monsieur," interposed the countess, "do not forget that you are a gentleman; Monsieur Carewe's hands are tied."

"Unfortunately," observed Maurice.

Madame looked curiously at the countess, while Fitzgerald drew back to the table and rested on it.

"I can not comprehend how you dared return," Madame resumed. "One who watches over my affairs has informed me of your dishonorable act."

"What do you call a dishonorable act?" Maurice inquired quietly.

"One who breaks his sacred promise!" quickly.

The prisoner laughed maliciously. Madame had answered the question as he hoped she would. "Chickens come home to roost. What do you say to that, my lord?" to the Englishman.

This time it was not the prisoner's cheeks which reddened. Even Madame was forced to look away, for if this reply touched the Englishman it certainly touched her as deeply. Incidentally, she was asking herself why she had permitted the Englishman to possess her lips, hers, which no man save her father had ever possessed before. A kiss, that was all it had been, yet the memory of it was persistent, annoying, embarrassing. In the spirit of play-a spirit whose origin mystified her-she had given the man something which she never could regain, a particle of her pride.

Besides, this was not all; she had in that moment given up her right to laugh at him when the time came; now she would not be able to laugh. She regretted the folly, and bit her lip at the thought of it. Consequences she had laughed at; now their possibilities disturbed her. She had been guilty of an indiscretion. The fact that the Englishman had ruined himself at her beck did not enter her mind. The hour for that had not yet arrived.

Seeing that his neat barb had left them all without answer, Maurice said: "Doubtless the informant who watches over your interests and various other interests of which you have no inkling, was the late Colonel Beauvais? For my part, I wish it was the late Beauvais in the sense in which we refer to the departed ones. But let us give him his true name-Prince Konrad, the last of the Walmodens, a cashiered gamester."

Only Fitzgerald showed any surprise. Maurice once saw that the others were in the secret. They knew the Colonel. Did they know why he was in Bleiberg? Let them find it out for themselves. He would not lift a finger to aid them. He leaned back and yawned.

"Pardon me," he said, with mock politeness, "but my hands are tied, and the truth is, I am sleepy."

"Count," said Madame, "release him. He will be too well guarded to fear his escaping."

The Colonel performed this service with alacrity. He honestly admired the young fellow who so seldom lost his temper. Besides, he had a sneaking idea that the lad was being unjustly accused.

Maurice got up and stretched himself. He rubbed his wrists, then sat down and waited for the comedy to proceed.

"So you confess," said Madame, "that you sold the consols to the archbishop?"

"I, confess?" Maurice screwed up his lips and began to whistle softly:

"Voici le sabre de mon Pere."

"You deny, then?" Madame was fast losing patience, a grave mistake when one is dealing with a banterer.

Maurice changed the tune:

"J'aime les militaires, Leur uniforme coquet, Leur moustache et leur plumet-"

"Answer!" with a stamp of the foot.

"Je sais ce que je voudrais, Je voudrais etre cantiniere!" . . .

"Monsieur," said the pretty countess, after a furtive glance at Madame's stormy eyes, "do you deny?"

The whistle ceased. "Madame, to you I shall say that I neither deny