The Puppet Crown - Harlod MacGrath (nice books to read TXT) 📗

world, the other more loneliness, coupled with unutterable regret. Still he wavered, and finally he fell.

"Madame, will you be my wife?"

"Yes." And it seemed to her that the word, came to her lips by no volition of hers. As she had grown red but a moment gone, she now grew correspondingly pale, and her limbs shook. She had irrevocably committed herself. "No, no!" as she saw him start forward with outstretched arms,. "not my lips till I am your wife! Not my lips; only my hands!"

He covered them with kisses.

"Hush!" as she stepped back.

It was time. Maurice and the countess entered the room. Maurice glanced from Madame to Fitzgerald and back to Madame; he frowned. The Englishman, who had never before had cause to dissemble, caught up his pipe and fumbled it. This act merely discovered his embarrassment to the keen eyes of his friend. He had forgotten all about Maurice. What would he say? Maurice was something like a conscience to him, and his heart grew troubled.

"Madame," Maurice whispered to the countess, "I have lost all faith in you; you have kept me too long under the stars."

"Confidences?" said Madame, with a swift inquiring glance at the countess.

"O, no," said Maurice. "I simply complained that Madame the countess had kept me too long under the stars. But here is Colonel Mollendorf, freshly returned from Brunnstadt to inform you that the army is fully prepared for any emergency. Is not that true, Colonel?" as he beheld that individual standing in the doorway.

"Yes; but how the deuce-your pardon, ladies! -did you find that out?" demanded the Colonel.

"I guessed it," was the answer. "But there will be no need of an army now. Come, John, the Colonel, who is no relative of the king's minister of police, has not the trick of concealing his impatience. He has something important to say to Madame, and we are in the way. Come along, AEneas, follow your faithful Achates; Thalia has a rehearsal."

Fitzgerald thrust his pipe into a pocket. "Good night, Madame," he said diffidently; "and you, countess."

"Good night, Colonel," sang out Maurice over his shoulder, and together the pair climbed the stairs.

Fitzgerald was at a loss how to begin, for something told him that Maurice would demand an explanation, though the affair was none of his concern. He filled his pipe, fired it and tramped about the room. Sometimes he picked up the end of a window curtain and felt of it; sometimes he posed before one of the landscape oils.

"You have something on your mind," said Maurice, pulling off his hussar jacket and kicking it across the room.

"Madame has promised to be my wife."

"And the conditions?" curtly.

Fitzgerald pondered over the other's lack of surprise. "What would you do if you loved a woman and she promised to be your wife?"

"I'd marry her," sitting down at the table.

"What would you do in my place, and Madame had promised to marry you?" puffing quickly.

"I'd marry her," answered Maurice, banging his fist on the table, "even if all the kings and queens of Europe rose up against me. I would marry her, if I had to bind her hands and feet and carry her to the altar and force the priest at the point of a pistol, which, in all probability, is what you will have to do."

"I love her," sullenly.

"Do you know who she is?"

"No."

"Would it make any difference?"

"No. Who is she?"

"She is a woman without conscience; she is a woman who, to gain her miserable ends, will stop neither at falsehood, deceit nor bloodshed. Do you want me to tell you more? She is-"

"Maurice, tell me nothing which will cause me to regret your friendship. I love her; she has promised to be my wife."

"She will ruin you."

"She has already done that," laconically.

"Do you mean to tell me-"

"Yes! For the promise of her love I am dishonored. For the privilege of kissing her lips I have sold my honor. To call her mine, I would go through hell. God! do you know what it is to be lonely, to starve in God-forsaken lands, to dream of women, to long for them?"

"And the poor paralytic king?"

"What is he to me?"

"And your father?"

"What are my dead father's wishes? Maurice, I am mad!"

"You are a very sick man," Maurice replied crossly. "What's to become of all these vows-"

"You are wasting your breath! Do you remember what Rochefoucauld said of Madame de Longueville?-`To win her heart, to delight her beautiful eyes, I have taken up arms against the king; I would have done the same against the gods!' Is she not worth it all?" with a gesture of his arms which sent the live coals of his pipe comet-like across the intervening space. "Is she not worth it all?"

"Who?-Madame de Longueville? I thought she was dead these two hundred years!"

"Damn it, Maurice!"

"I will, if you say so. The situation is equal to a good deal of plain, honest damning." Maurice banged his fist again. "John, sit down and listen to me. I'll not sit still and see you made a fool. Promises? This woman will keep none. When she has wrung you dry she will fling you aside. At this moment she is probably laughing behind your back. You were brought here for this purpose. Threats and bribes were without effect. Love might accomplish what the other two had failed to do. You know little of the ways of the world. Do you know that this house party is scandalous, for all its innocence? Do you know that Madame's name would be a byword were it known that we have been here more than two weeks, alone with two women? Who but a woman that feels herself above convention would dare offer this affront to society? Do you know why Madame the countess came? Company for Madame? No; she was to play make love to me to keep me out of the way. Ass that I was, I never suspected till too late! Madame's name is not Sylvia Amerbach; it is-"

The door opened unceremoniously and in walked the Colonel.

"Your voices are rather high, gentlemen," he said calmly, and sat down in an easy chair.


CHAPTER XIII


BEING OF COMPLICATIONS NOT RECKONED ON

Maurice leaped to his feet, a menace in his eyes. The Colonel crossed his legs, rested his hands on the hilt of his saber, and smiled.

"I could not resist the desire to have a friendly chat with you."

"You have come cursed inopportune," snarled Maurice. "What do you want?"

"I want to give you the countersigns, so that when you start for Bleiberg to-morrow morning you'll have no trouble."

"Bleiberg !" exclaimed Maurice.

"Bleiberg. Madame desires me to say to you that you are to start for that city in the morning, to fetch those slips of parchment which have caused us all these years of worry. Ah, my friend," to Fitzgerald, "Madame would be cheap at twenty millions! You sly dog! And I never suspected it."

Fitzgerald sent him a scowl. "You are damned impertinent, sir."

"Impertinent?" The Colonel uncrossed his legs and brought his knees together. "Madame has been under my care since she was a child, Monsieur; I have a fatherly interest in her. At any rate, I am glad that the affair is at an end. It was very noble in you. If I had had my way, though, it would have been war, pure and simple. I left the duchess in Brunnstadt this morning; she will be delighted to attend the wedding."

"She will attend it," said Maurice, grimly; "but I would not lay odds on her delight. Colonel, the devil take me if I go to Bleiberg on any such errand." He went to the window seat.

The Colonel rose and followed him. "Pardon me," he said to Fitzgerald, who did not feel at all complimented by Madame's haste; "a few words in Monsieur Carewe's ear. He will go to Bleiberg; he will be glad to go." He bent towards Maurice. "Go to Bleiberg, my son. A word to him about Madame, and off you go to Brunnstadt. Will you be of any use there? I think not. The little countess would cry out her pretty eyes if she heard that you were languishing in the city prison at Brunnstadt, where only the lowest criminals are confined. Submit gracefully, that is to say, like a soldier against whom the fortunes of war have gone. Go to Bleiberg."

"I'll go. I give up." It was not the threat which brought him to this decision. It was a vision of a madonna-like face. "I'll go, John. Where are the certificates?"

"Between the mattresses and the slats of my bed you will find a gun in a case. The certificates are in the barrels." His countenance did not express any particular happiness; the lines about his mouth were sharper than usual.

"The devil!" cried the Colonel; "if only I had known that!" He laughed. "Well, I'll leave you. Six o'clock-what's this?" as he stooped and picked up Maurice's cast-off hussar jacket.

"I was about to use it as a door mat," said Maurice, who was in a nasty humor. That Fitzgerald had surrendered did not irritate him half so much as the thought that he was the real puppet. His hands were tied, he could not act, and he was one that loved his share in games.

The Colonel reddened under his tan. "No; I'll not lose my temper, though this is cause enough. Curse me, but you lack courtesy. This is my uniform, and whatever it may be to you it is sacred to me. You were not forced into it; you were not compelled to wear it. What would you do if a man wore your uniform and flung it around in this manner?"

"I'd knock him down," Maurice admitted. "I apologize, Colonel; it was not manly. But you must make allowances; my good nature has suffered a severe strain. I'll get into my own clothes to- morrow if you will have a servant sew on some buttons and mend the collar. By the way, who is eating three meals a day in the east corridor on the third floor?"

Their glances fenced. The Colonel rubbed his mustache.

"I like you," he said; "hang me if I don't. But as well as I like you, I would not give a denier for your life if you were found in that self-same corridor. The sentinel has orders to shoot; but don't let that disturb you; you will know sooner or later. It is better to wait than be shot. A horse will be saddled at six. You will find it in the court. The countersigns are Weixel and Arnoldt. Good luck to you."

"The same to you," rejoined Maurice, "only worse."

The Colonel's departure was followed by a period of temporary speechlessness. Maurice smoked several "Khedives," while Fitzgerald emptied two or three pipe-bowls.

"You seem to be in bad odor, Maurice," the latter ventured.

"In more ways than one. Where, in heaven's name, did you resurrect that pipe?"

"In the stables. It isn't the pipe, it's the tobacco. I had to break up some cigars."

Then came another period in the conversation. It occurred to both that something yawned between them-a kind of abyss. Out of this abyss one