By Wit of Woman - Arthur W. Marchmont (e textbook reader .TXT) 📗

and shot at me such a glance of hate that I knew he understood I had outwitted him. Then his devil-may-care nature reasserted itself, and he sat down and laughed.

"I suppose this is prepared for me?"

"Yes and no. My servant has mistaken the room into which you were to be shown—that is all. I meant to see you alone first. There will probably be some money to be returned to you—unless he has made another mistake as to that. I told him to be careful to insist upon part payment for his treachery in advance. I'll ring for him."

"What's this, Gustav?" asked Karl, as I crossed to the bell.

"Nothing to do with you," was the surly reply.

"Good morning, Count Gustav," put in Colonel Katona, "Miss von Dreschler, may I not now go and admire your garden?"

"No, Colonel, not yet if you please." At the answer, his face clouded ominously. He glanced from me swiftly to Count Gustav, and back to me with dark suggestiveness.

James Perry came in then.

"Did Count Gustav give you any money this morning, James?"

"Yes, Miss Christabel."

"Give it to me." He handed me a bundle of notes and went out. I passed them on to Count Gustav. "You have made a mistake, Count. American servants are not to be found on the bargain counter."

"There is something here to be explained," said Colonel Katona, abruptly.

"Count Gustav was to have come to me at General von Erlanger's at twelve o'clock to-day; perhaps it might explain matters if he told us why he preferred to come here." I spoke very coldly.

He dropped his eyes to the ground, declining the challenge, and sat swinging his legs moodily in silence.

"What is it all, Christabel?" asked Karl.

"Trouble perhaps for us all, and probably very serious trouble. If Count Gustav will not explain, I will."

I stopped for him to speak.

"You know why I came?" he said.

"Your brother and Colonel Katona do not."

"Hadn't we better speak together alone first?"

"Yes, if you wish."

We went out together into another room.

"You have played me an ugly trick," he began.

"It is rather that you sought to play me one and failed. You came here to steal Gareth from my care."

"Where is she?"

"In this house here."

"My God!" There was no mistaking the intensity of his feelings. He threw himself into a chair and stared down at the carpet, his face wrinkled in lines of thought, perplexity, and fear. "Does Colonel Katona know?" he asked after a long, tense pause.

"Not yet."

"You mean to tell him?"

"I have brought him here for that purpose.

"He mustn't be told."

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged my shoulders, and left him to interpret the gesture as he pleased.

"You don't know what you are doing. My God, you don't; or you'd never dare. What are your terms now?"

"No more than they were before—and no less."

He took a paper from his pocket. "Here's the first of them—over my father's signature."

"Is this what you were to have brought to the General's house?"

"Yes," he nodded.

"It is not your doing, then, that part?"

"What else do you want?"

"You know quite well—that you make Gareth your wife."

"You're not so clever as you think you are," he jeered. This cheap sneer at me appeared to afford him some relief.

"Have you no thought for her?

"I don't wish to hear about her from you."

"Then her father and yours had better speak of her. The Duke knows the story by now; and the matter has to be settled somehow."

"You are brewing an awful mess and making any settlement impossible. But then you're a woman, and can be trusted to do that."

"Shall I send for Colonel Katona to come to us here?"

"No," he cried quickly, and then gave a desperate sigh.

"Yet you love Gareth," I said.

"I tell you I won't hear of her from you."

"And she has given you all her innocent heart, trusting you, believing in you, loving you, as only such a sweet pure girl as she could."

"I will not hear you," he cried again fiercely.

"If you will not, there is only one alternative." He was silent, so I continued. "I do not plead for her—don't think that. Her cause needs no pleading at my hands; because there are those who will not see injustice done to her. You know that—selfish, reckless, wicked and daring as you are. Her father is equally daring, and knows how to revenge a wrong done to her."

"What do you want to say, then? Can you see any way?"

"When you spoke to me that afternoon at Madame d'Artelle's house about her, I saw that you loved her; and what I would appeal to now is that love of yours for her."

"Go on," he said sullenly.

"You would be neither sullen nor indifferent if you could have seen her when to-day she knew you were coming. You know little of a woman's heart; but I know it—and all Gareth's was in her glad eyes at the thought of being once again with you. She is not well, moreover worried and harassed by suspense; ill with the fever of unrest. She has no strength for the part you have made her play, and the passionate desire to have this tangle straightened and peace made with her father is wearing her life away."

Whether he was touched by this, I cannot say. He gave no sign.

"You wish for a chance to checkmate me," I continued; "and here you can find one. I promised her happiness—you can give that promise the lie; you can break her heart and blight her life, and probably kill her. I have acted in the belief that you cared for her: you can sneer that belief out of existence, and win at least that one success over me. You would have a victory of a sort; but I would not envy your feelings in the hour of triumph."

He took this in silence also. I did not think he had even cared to listen.

"Have you anything more to say?" he asked after a pause.

"If your heart is dead to her, no words are needed—none can do any good. But it will not be well for you."

"Threats now?"

"I leave them for Gareth's father. You know what he can do?"

Something in the words touched him. He looked up with a new, sudden suspicion. "You know that, too?" he asked, sharply. "Is that why you've trapped me here like this?"

"That is not my part of it," I replied, ambiguously, leaving him to make of the answer what he would.

"Can I see Gareth?"

"Yes, when her father knows, and with his consent."

He shrugged his shoulders and sneered again. "You take me for a villain, of course. You said so once."

"I will gladly revise my opinion if you will give me occasion."

"I told you you were not so sharp as you thought. If you were, and if there is what I suppose there is behind those words of yours just now, you would see that I might be as anxious as yourself for Gareth—if only I could see the way."

"I should be glad to think it—for her sake."

"You can. It's true. And if you could see a way I'd forgive you all the rest."

"I have no more to say—to you," I said, rising.

"You are going to tell him?"

"Yes—now. There is no good in delay."

He got up, frowning, his face anxious but resolute. "No; this is my affair. You have done enough mischief. Send him to me. I'll tell him."

"I will not have violence in my house."

He came close to me and stared into my eyes. "Do you know what Colonel Katona can do in this?"

"I know he has sworn to have the life of the man who has wronged his child."

He waved this aside with a shake of the head and a toss of the hand. "Is that all you know?"

"Yes—but it is enough."

"I will tell him myself. Not alone if you say so. Karl can hear it too."

"You had better go to them. You will of course tell him everything. If you do not, I shall."

"You don't understand. This is beyond you now. I shall tell him one thing which you have been too prejudiced and blind to see—that Gareth is already my wife, legally—as you like to insist."

"I don't believe you—nor will he."

"Believe it or not as you please—it is true; if a priest of the Holy Church can make man and woman husband and wife."

He swung away with that, and I watched him cross the hall with quick, firm steps, and enter the room where Colonel Katona and Karl were waiting.

I was glad to be spared the ordeal of that interview, and was still standing thoughtfully at the closed door on the other side of which that scene of the drama was being enacted, when a carriage drove up rapidly.

I knew it was General von Erlanger and the Duke, and I told the servant to show them into one of the larger rooms in the front of the house.

CHAPTER XXVII "THIS IS GARETH"

I was in the act of going to the Duke and my fingers were all but on the handle of the door, when I recalled the idea which had flashed upon me an hour before when with Gareth, and instantly I resolved to act upon it.

Running back into the room where I had been with Count Gustav, I wrote two lines to his Excellency.

"I have made one mistake. Count Gustav's marriage is legal. Gareth is really his wife. Let the Duke know this."

I sent James Perry in with this note to the General and a message that I would be with him in one minute.

Then I ran up to Gareth. The poor child was sick from the suspense; but I noticed with intense satisfaction that she had been filling up some of the weary time of waiting by making herself look as pretty as possible.

"Is he here, Christabel? Oh, how my heart beats."

"Yes, dear, he is here. He is with your father now, telling him all; and you are to come with me to the Duke." I put it so intentionally, that she might believe Gustav had expressed the wish.

"What do we not owe you, Christabel?" she cried, kissing me tenderly. "But I'd rather see Kar—Gustav, first. I've been practising that name ever since you left me; but it sounds so strange. The other will come out first."

"Try and remember it with the Duke, Gareth. It doesn't matter with any one else so much."

"Oh, I can't go to him. I can't. He is such a stern and terrible old man, so—Gustav says. I got it nearly right that, time, didn't I?" and she laughed.

"It will soon come quite naturally, dear. Are you ready? He may not like it if we keep him waiting."

I looked at her critically, gave a touch or two to her fair hair, and kissed her. "You look very beautiful, Gareth."

"I feel very frightened," she said, and clung to me as we went down the stairs. I believe I was almost as nervous as she could have been; for I was indeed drawing a bow at a venture. But I dared not let her guess my feelings, lest she should run back upstairs.

So I took her hand and pushed on steadily, and when James opened the door of the room I led her right across to where the Duke sat, and, with my heart thumping against my ribs I said, just as I had thought to say:

"This is Gareth, Duke Ladislas."

His bird-like face was as black as a night-storm. His keen eyes watched us both, glancing swiftly from my face to Gareth's, and from her back to me as we hurried across the room. The heavy brows were pent, and when we stood in front of him there came an ominous pause—like the calm when the storm is to burst.

Gareth was so frightened by this reception that the clutch of her fingers tightened on mine. I felt her trembling and saw her colour go, as she flinched with a little gasping catch of the breath all eloquent of fear.

His