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THE PRIMADONNA

A SEQUEL TO "FAIR MARGARET"

BY

F. MARION CRAWFORD

AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "SANT' ILARIO," "FAIR MARGARET," ETC., ETC.

1908

[Illustration]




CHAPTER I


When the accident happened, Cordova was singing the mad scene in
_Lucia_ for the last time in that season, and she had never sung it
better. _The Bride of Lammermoor_ is the greatest love-story ever
written, and it was nothing short of desecration to make a libretto
of it; but so far as the last act is concerned the opera certainly
conveys the impression that the heroine is a raving lunatic. Only a
crazy woman could express feeling in such an unusual way.

Cordova's face was nothing but a mask of powder, in which her handsome
brown eyes would have looked like two holes if she had not kept them
half shut under the heavily whitened lids; her hands were chalked too,
and they were like plaster casts of hands, cleverly jointed at the
wrists. She wore a garment which was supposed to be a nightdress,
which resembled a very expensive modern shroud, and which was
evidently put on over a good many other things. There was a deal of
lace on it, which fluttered when she made her hands shake to accompany
each trill, and all this really contributed to the general impression
of insanity. Possibly it was overdone; but if any one in the audience
had seen such a young person enter his or her room unexpectedly, and
uttering such unaccountable sounds, he or she would most assuredly
have rung for a doctor and a cab, and for a strait-jacket if such a
thing were to be had in the neighbourhood.

An elderly man, with very marked features and iron-grey hair, sat in
the fifth row of the stalls, on the right-hand aisle. He was a bony
man, and the people behind him noticed him and thought he looked
strong. He had heard Bonanni in her best days and many great lyric
sopranos from Patti to Melba, and he was thinking that none of them
had sung the mad scene better than Cordova, who had only been on the
stage two years, and was now in New York for the first time. But he
had already heard her in London and Paris, and he knew her. He had
first met her at a breakfast on board Logotheti's yacht at Cap Martin.
Logotheti was a young Greek financier who lived in Paris and wanted to
marry her. He was rather mad, and had tried to carry her off on the
night of the dress rehearsal before her _début_, but had somehow got
himself locked up for somebody else. Since then he had grown calmer,
but he still worshipped at the shrine of the Cordova. He was not
the only one, however; there were several, including the very
distinguished English man of letters, Edmund Lushington, who had known
her before she had begun to sing on the stage.

But Lushington was in England and Logotheti was in Paris, and on the
night of the accident Cordova had not many acquaintances in the house
besides the bony man with grey hair; for though society had been
anxious to feed her and get her to sing for nothing, and to play
bridge with her, she had never been inclined to accept those
attentions. Society in New York claimed her, on the ground that she
was a lady and was an American on her mother's side. Yet she insisted
on calling herself a professional, because singing was her profession,
and society thought this so strange that it at once became suspicious
and invented wild and unedifying stories about her; and the reporters
haunted the lobby of her hotel, and gossiped with their friends the
detectives, who also spent much time there in a professional way for
the general good, and were generally what English workmen call wet
smokers.

Cordova herself was altogether intent on what she was doing and was
not thinking of her friends, of Lushington, or Logotheti, nor of the
bony man in the stalls; certainly not of society, though it was richly
represented by diamonds in the subscriber's tier. Indeed the jewellery
was so plentiful and of such expensive quality that the whole row of
boxes shone like a vast coronet set with thousands of precious stones.
When the music did not amuse society, the diamonds and rubies twinkled
and glittered uneasily, but when Cordova was trilling her wildest
they were quite still and blazed with a steady light. Afterwards the
audience would all say again what they had always said about every
great lyric soprano, that it was just a wonderful instrument without a
particle of feeling, that it was an over-grown canary, a human flute,
and all the rest of it; but while the trills ran on the people
listened in wonder and the diamonds were very quiet.

'A-a--A-a--A-a--A-a--' sang Cordova at an inconceivable pitch.

A terrific explosion shook the building to its foundations; the lights
went out, and there was a long grinding crash of broken glass not far
off.

In the momentary silence that followed before the inevitable panic the
voice of Schreiermeyer, the manager, rang out through the darkness.

'Ladies and gentlemen! There's no danger! Keep your seats! The lights
will be up directly.'

And indeed the little red lamps over each door that led out, being on
another circuit, were all burning quietly, but in the first moment of
fright no one noticed them, and the house seemed to be quite dark.

Then the whole mass of humanity began to writhe and swell, as a
frightened crowd does in the dark, so that every one feels as if all
the other people were growing hugely big, as big as elephants, to
smother and crush him; and each man makes himself as broad as he can,
and tries to swell out his chest, and squares his elbows to keep the
weight off his sides; and with the steady strain and effort every one
breathes hard, and few speak, and the hard-drawn breath of thousands
together makes a sound of rushing wind like bellows as enormous as
houses, blowing steadily in the darkness.

'Keep your seats!' yelled Schreiermeyer desperately.

He had been in many accidents, and understood the meaning of the
noises he heard. There was death in them, death for the weak by
squeezing, and smothering, and trampling underfoot. It was a grim
moment, and no one who was there has forgotten it, the manager least
of all.

'It's only a fuse gone!' he shouted. 'Only a plug burnt out!'

But the terrified throng did not believe, and the people pressed upon
each other with the weight of hundreds of bodies, thronging from
behind, towards the little red lights. There were groans now, besides
the strained breathing and the soft shuffling of many feet on the
thick carpets. Each time some one went down there was a groan, stifled
as instantly and surely as though the lips from which it came were
quickly thrust under water.

Schreiermeyer knew well enough that if nothing could be done within
the next two minutes there would be an awful catastrophe; but he was
helpless. No doubt the electricians were at work; in ten minutes the
damage would be repaired and the lights would be up again; but the
house would be empty then, except for the dead and the dying.

Another groan was heard, and another quickly after it. The wretched
manager yelled, stormed, stamped, entreated, and promised, but with no
effect. In the very faint red light from the doors he saw a moving
sea of black and heard it surging to his very feet. He had an old
professional's exact sense of passing time, and he knew that a full
minute had already gone by since the explosion. No one could be dead
yet, even in that press, but there were few seconds to spare, fewer
and fewer.

Then another sound was heard, a very pure strong note, high above his
own tones, a beautiful round note, that made one think of gold and
silver bells, and that filled the house instantly, like light, and
reached every ear, even through the terror that was driving the crowd
mad in the dark.

A moment more, an instant's pause, and Cordova had begun Lucia's song
again at the beginning, and her marvellous trills and staccato notes,
and trills again, trills upon trills without end, filled the vast
darkness and stopped those four thousand men and women, spellbound and
silent, and ashamed too.

It was not great music, surely; but it was sung by the greatest living
singer, singing alone in the dark, as calmly and as perfectly as if
all the orchestra had been with her, singing as no one can who feels
the least tremor of fear; and the awful tension of the dark throng
relaxed, and the breath that came was a great sigh of relief, for it
was not possible to be frightened when a fearless woman was singing so
marvellously.

Then, still in the dark, some of the musicians struck in and supported
her, and others followed, till the whole body of harmony was complete;
and just as she was at the wildest trills, at the very passage during
which the crash had come, the lights went up all at once; and there
stood Cordova in white and lace, with her eyes half shut and shaking
her outstretched hands as she always made them shake in the mad scene;
and the stage was just as it had been before the accident, except that
Schreiermeyer was standing near the singer in evening dress with a
perfectly new and shiny high hat on the back of his head, and his
mouth wide open.

The people were half hysterical from the past danger, and when they
saw, and realised, they did not wait for the end of the air, but sent
up such a shout of applause as had never been heard in the Opera
before and may not be heard there again.

Instinctively the Primadonna sang the last bars, though no one heard
her in the din, unless it was Schreiermeyer, who stood near her. When
she had finished at last he ran up to her and threw both his arms
round her in a paroxysm of gratitude, regardless of her powder and
chalk, which came off upon his coat and yellow beard in patches of
white as he kissed her on both cheeks, calling her by every endearing
name that occurred to his polyglot memory, from Sweetheart in English
to Little Cabbage in French, till Cordova laughed and pushed him away,
and made a tremendous courtesy to the audience.

Just then a man in a blue jacket and gilt buttons entered from the
left of the stage and whispered a few words into Schreiermeyer's ear.
The manager looked grave at once, nodded and came forward to the
prompter's box. The man had brought news of the accident, he said;
a quantity of dynamite which was to have been used in subterranean
blasting had exploded and had done great damage, no one yet knew how
great. It was probable that many persons had been killed.

But for this news, Cordova would have had one of those ovations which
rarely fall to the lot of any but famous singers, for there was not a
man or woman in the theatre who had not felt that she had averted a
catastrophe and saved scores of lives. As it was, several women had
been slightly hurt and at least fifty had fainted. Every one was
anxious to help them now, most of all the very people who had hurt
them.

But the news of an accident in the city emptied the house in a few
minutes; even now that the lights were up the anxiety to get out
to the street and to know more of the truth was great enough to be
dangerous, and the strong crowd heaved and surged again and pushed
through the many doors with little thought for the weak or for any who
had been injured in the first panic.

But in the meantime Cordova had reached her dressing-room, supported
by the enthusiastic Schreiermeyer on one side, and by the equally
enthusiastic tenor on the other, while the singular family party
assembled in the last act of _Lucia di Lammermoor_ brought up the rear
with many expressions of admiration and sympathy.

As a matter of fact the Primadonna needed neither sympathy nor
support, and that sort of admiration was not of the kind that most
delighted her. She did not believe that she had done anything heroic,
and did not feel at all inclined to cry.

'You saved the whole audience!' cried Signor Pompeo Stromboli, the
great Italian tenor, who presented an amazing appearance in his
Highland dress. 'Four thousand seven hundred and fifty-three people
owe you their lives at this moment! Every one of them would have been
dead but for your superb coolness! Ah, you are indeed a great woman!'

Schreiermeyer's business ear had caught the figures. As they walked,
each with an arm through one of the Primadonna's, he leaned back and
spoke to Stromboli behind her head.

'How the devil do you know what the house was?' he asked sharply.

'I always know,' answered the Italian in a perfectly matter-of-fact
tone. 'My dresser finds out from the box-office. I never take the C
sharp if there are less than three thousand.'

'I'll stop that!' growled Schreiermeyer.

'As you please!' Stromboli shrugged his massive shoulders. 'C sharp is
not in the engagement!'

'It shall be in the next! I won't sign without it!'

'I won't sign at all!' retorted the tenor with a sneer of superiority.
'You need not talk of conditions, for I shall not come to America
again!'

'Oh, do stop quarrelling!' laughed Cordova as they reached the door of
her box, for she had heard similar amenities exchanged twenty times
already, and she knew that they meant nothing at all on either side.

'Have you any beer?' inquired Stromboli of the Primadonna, as if
nothing had happened.

'Bring some beer, Bob!' Schreiermeyer called out over his shoulder to
some one in the distance.

'Yes, sir,' answered a rough voice, far off, and with a foreign
accent.

The three entered the Primadonna's dressing-room together. It was a
hideous place, as all dressing-rooms are which are never used two days
in succession by the same actress or singer; very different from
the pretty cells in the beehive of the Comédie Française where each
pensioner or shareholder is lodged like a queen bee by herself, for
years at a time.

The walls of Cordova's dressing-room were more or less white-washed
where the plaster had not been damaged. There was a dingy full-length
mirror, a shabby toilet-table; there were a few crazy chairs, the
wretched furniture which is generally to be found in actresses'
dressing-rooms, notwithstanding the marvellous descriptions invented
by romancers. But there was light in abundance and to excess,
dazzling, unshaded, intolerable to any but theatrical eyes. There were
at least twenty strong electric lamps in the miserable place, which
illuminated the coarsely painted faces of the Primadonna and the tenor
with alarming distinctness, and gleamed on Schreiermeyer's smooth fair
hair and beard, and impassive features.

'You'll have two columns and a portrait in every paper to-morrow,' he
observed thoughtfully. 'It's worth while to engage such people. Oh
yes, damn it, I tell you it's worth while!'

The last emphatic sentence was intended for Stromboli, as if he had
contradicted the statement, or were himself not 'worth while.'

'There's beer there already,' said the tenor, seeing a bottle and
glass on a deal table, and making for them at once.

He undid the patent fastening, stood upright with his sturdy
stockinged legs wide apart, threw his head back, opened his huge
painted mouth to the necessary extent, but not to the full, and
without touching his lips poured the beer into the chasm in a gurgling
stream, which he swallowed without the least apparent difficulty. When
he had taken down half the contents of the small bottle he desisted
and poured the rest into the glass, apparently for Cordova's benefit.

'I hope I have left you enough,' he said, as he prepared to go. 'My
throat felt like a rusty gun-barrel.'

'Fright is very bad for the voice,' Schreiermeyer remarked, as the
call-boy handed him another bottle of beer through the open door.

Stromboli took no notice of the direct imputation. He had taken a very
small and fine handkerchief from his sporran and was carefully tucking
it into his collar with some idea of protecting his throat. When this
was done his admiration for his colleague broke out again without the
slightest warning.

'You were superb, magnificent, surpassing!' he cried.

He seized Cordova's chalked hands, pressed them to his own whitened
chin, by sheer force of stage habit, because the red on his lips would
have come off on them, and turned away.

'Surpassing! Magnificent! What a woman!' he roared in tremendous tones
as he strode away through the dim corridor towards the stage and his
own dressing-room on the other side.

Meanwhile Schreiermeyer, who was quite as thirsty as the tenor, drank
what the latter had left in the only glass there was, and set the full
bottle beside the latter on the deal table.

'There is your beer,' he said, calling attention to what he had done.

Cordova nodded carelessly and sat down on one of the crazy chairs
before the toilet-table. Her maid at once came forward and took off
her wig, and her own beautiful brown hair appeared, pressed and matted
close to her head in a rather disorderly coil.

'You must be tired,' said the manager, with more consideration than
he often showed to any one whose next engagement was already signed.
'I'll find out how many were killed in the explosion and then I'll
get hold of the reporters. You'll have two columns and a picture
to-morrow.'

Schreiermeyer rarely took the trouble to say good-morning or
good-night, and Cordova heard the door shut after him as he went out.

'Lock it,' she said to her maid. 'I'm sure that madman is about the
theatre again.'

The maid obeyed with alacrity. She was very tall and dark, and
when she had entered Cordova's service two years ago she had been
positively cadaverous. She herself said that her appearance had been
the result of living many years with the celebrated Madame Bonanni,
who was a whirlwind, an earthquake, a phenomenon, a cosmic force. No
one who had lived with her in her stage days had ever grown fat; it
was as much as a very strong constitution could do not to grow thin.

Madame Bonanni had presented the cadaverous woman to the young
Primadonna as one of the most precious of her possessions, and out of
sheer affection. It was true that since the great singer had closed
her long career and had retired to live in the country, in Provence,
she dressed with such simplicity as made it possible for her to exist
without the long-faithful, all-skilful, and iron-handed Alphonsine;
and the maid, on her side, was so thoroughly a professional theatrical
dresser that she must have died of inanition in what she would have
called private life. Lastly, she had heard that Madame Bonanni had now
given up the semblance, long far from empty, but certainly vain, of a
waist, and dressed herself in a garment resembling a priest's cassock,
buttoned in front from her throat to her toes.

Alphonsine locked the door, and the Primadonna leaned her elbows on
the sordid toilet-table and stared at her chalked and painted face,
vaguely trying to recognise the features of Margaret Donne, the
daughter of the quiet Oxford scholar, her real self as she had been
two years ago, and by no means very different from her everyday self
now. But it was not easy. Margaret was there, no doubt, behind the
paint and the 'liquid white,' but the reality was what the public
saw beyond the footlights two or three times a week during the opera
season, and applauded with might and main as the most successful lyric
soprano of the day.

There were moments when she tried to get hold of herself and bring
herself back. They came most often after some great emotion in the
theatre, when the sight of the painted mask in the glass shocked and
disgusted her as it did to-night; when the contrasts of life were
almost more than she could bear, when her sensibilities awoke again,
when the fastidiousness of the delicately nurtured girl revolted under
the rough familiarity of such a comrade as Stromboli, and rebelled
against the sordid cynicism of Schreiermeyer.

She shuddered at the mere idea that the manager should have thought
she would drink out of the glass he had just used. Even the Italian
peasant, who had been a goatherd in Calabria, and could hardly write
his name, showed more delicacy, according to his lights, which were
certainly not dazzling. A faint ray of Roman civilisation had reached
him through generations of slaves and serfs and shepherds. But no
such traditions of forgotten delicacy disturbed the manners of
Schreiermeyer. The glass from which he had drunk was good enough for
any primadonna in his company, and it was silly for any of them to
give themselves airs. Were they not largely his creatures, fed from
his hand, to work for him while they were young, and to be turned out
as soon as they began to sing false? He was by no means the worst of
his kind, as Margaret knew very well.

She thought of her childhood, of her mother and of her father, both
dead long before she had gone on the stage; and of that excellent and
kind Mrs. Rushmore, her American mother's American friend, who had
taken her as her own daughter, and had loved her and cared for her,
and had shed tears when Margaret insisted on becoming a singer; who
had fought for her, too, and had recovered for her a small fortune of
which her mother had been cheated. For Margaret would have been more
than well off without her profession, even when she had made her
_début_, and she had given up much to be a singer, believing that she
knew what she was doing.

But now she was ready to undo it all and to go back; at least she
thought she was, as she stared at herself in the glass while the pale
maid drew her hair back and fastened it far above her forehead with a
big curved comb, as a preliminary to getting rid of paint and powder.
At this stage of the operation the Primadonna was neither Cordova nor
Margaret Donne; there was something terrifying about the exaggeratedly
painted mask when the wig was gone and her natural hair was drawn
tightly back. She thought she was like a monstrous skinned rabbit with
staring brown eyes.

At first, with the inexperience of youth, she used to plunge her
painted face into soapsuds and scrub vigorously till her own
complexion appeared, a good deal overheated and temporarily shiny;
but before long she had yielded to Alphonsine's entreaties and
representations and had adopted the butter method, long familiar to
chimney-sweeps.

The butter lay ready; not in a lordly dish, but in a clean tin can
with a cover, of the kind workmen use for fetching beer, and commonly
called a 'growler' in New York, for some reason which escapes
etymologists.

Having got rid of the upper strata of white lace and fine linen,
artfully done up so as to tremble like aspen leaves with Lucia's mad
trills, Margaret proceeded to butter her face thoroughly. It occurred
to her just then that all the other artists who had appeared with her
were presumably buttering their faces at the same moment, and that if
the public could look in upon them it would be very much surprised
indeed. At the thought she forgot what she had been thinking of and
smiled.

The maid, who was holding her hair back where it escaped the comb,
smiled too, and evidently considered that the relaxation of Margaret's
buttered features was equivalent to a permission to speak.

'It was a great triumph for Madame,' she observed. 'All the papers
will praise Madame to-morrow. Madame saved many lives.'

'Was Mr. Griggs in the house?' Margaret asked. 'I did not see him.'

Alphonsine did not answer at once, and when she spoke her tone had
changed.

'Yes, Madame. Mr. Griggs was in the house.'

Margaret wondered whether she had saved his life too, in his own
estimation or in that of her maid, and while she pondered the question
she buttered her nose industriously.

Alphonsine took a commercial view of the case.

'If Madame would appear three times more in New York, before sailing,
the manager would give ten thousand francs a night,' she observed.

Margaret said nothing to this, but she thought it would be amusing to
show herself to an admiring public in her present condition.

'Madame is now a heroine,' continued Alphonsine, behind her. 'Madame
can ask anything she pleases. Several milliardaires will now offer to
marry Madame.'

'Alphonsine,' answered Margaret, 'you have no sense.'

The maid smiled, knowing that her mistress could not see even the
reflection of the smile in the glass; but she said nothing.

'No sense,' Margaret repeated, with conviction. 'None at all'

The maid allowed a few seconds to pass before she spoke again.

'Or if Madame would accept to sing in one or two private houses in New
York, we could ask a very great price, more than the manager would
give.'

'I daresay.'

'It is certain,' said Alphonsine. 'At the French ball to which Madame
kindly allowed me to go, the valet of Mr. Van Torp approached me.'

'Indeed!' exclaimed Cordova absently. 'How very disagreeable!'

'I see that Madame is not listening,' said Alphonsine, taking offence.

What she said was so true that Margaret did not answer at all.
Besides, the buttering process was finished, and it was time for the
hot water. She went to the ugly stationary washstand and bent over it,
while the maid kept her hair from her face. Alphonsine spoke again
when she was sure that her mistress could not possibly answer her.

'Mr. Van Torp's valet asked me whether I thought Madame would be
willing to sing in church, at the wedding, the day after to-morrow,'
she said, holding the Primadonna's back hair firmly.

The head moved energetically under her hands. Margaret would certainly
not sing at Mr. Van Torp's wedding, and she even tried to say so, but
her voice only bubbled and sputtered ineffectually through the soap
and water.

'I was sure Madame would not,' continued the maid, 'though Mr. Van
Torp's valet said that money was no object. He had heard Mr. Van Torp
say that he would give five thousand dollars to have Madame sing at
his wedding.'

Margaret did not shake her head this time, nor try to speak, but
Alphonsine heard the little impatient tap of her slipper on the wooden
floor. It was not often that the Primadonna showed so much annoyance
at anything; and of late, when she did, the cause had been connected
with this same Mr. Van Torp. The mere mention of his name irritated
her, and Alphonsine seemed to know it, and to take an inexplicable
pleasure in talking about him--about Mr. Rufus Van Torp, formerly of
Chicago, but now of New York. He was looked upon as the controlling
intellect of the great Nickel Trust; in fact, he was the Nickel Trust
himself, and the other men in it were mere dummies compared with him.
He had sailed the uncertain waters of finance for twenty years or
more, and had been nearly shipwrecked more than once, but at the time
of this story he was on the top of the wave; and as his past was even
more entirely a matter of conjecture than his future, it would be
useless to inquire into the former or to speculate about the latter.
Moreover, in these break-neck days no time counts but the present, so
far as reputation goes; good fame itself now resembles righteousness
chiefly because it clothes men as with a garment; and as we have the
highest authority for assuming that charity covers a multitude of
sins, we can hardly be surprised that it should be so generally
used for that purpose. Rufus Van Torp's charities were notorious,
aggressive, and profitable. The same sums of money could not have
bought as much mingled advertisement and immunity in any other way.

'Of course,' observed Alphonsine, seeing that Margaret would soon be
able to speak again, 'money is no object to Madame either!'

This subtle flattery was evidently meant to forestall reproof. But
Margaret was now splashing vigorously, and as both taps were running
the noise was as loud as that of a small waterfall; possibly she had
not even heard the maid's last speech.

Some one knocked at the door, and knocked a second time almost
directly. The Primadonna pushed Alphonsine with her elbow, speaking
being still impossible, and the woman understood that she was to
answer the summons.

She asked who was knocking, and some one answered.

'It is Mr. Griggs,' said Alphonsine.

'Ask him to wait,' Margaret succeeded in saying.

Alphonsine transmitted the message through the closed door, and
listened for the answer.

'He says that there is a lady dying in the manager's room, who wants
Madame,' said the maid, repeating what she heard.

Margaret stood upright, turned quickly, and crossed the room to the
door, mopping her face with a towel.

'Who is it?' she asked in an anxious tone.

'I'm Griggs,' said a deep voice. 'Come at once, if you can, for the
poor girl cannot last long.'

'One minute! Don't go away--I'm coming out.'

Alphonsine never lost her head. A theatrical dresser who does is of no
use. She had already brought the wide fur coat Margaret always wore
after singing. In ten seconds the singer was completely clothed in
it, and as she laid her hand on the lock to let herself out, the maid
placed a dark Russian hood on her head from behind her and took the
long ends twice round her throat.

Mr. Griggs was a large bony man with iron-grey hair, who looked very
strong. He had a sad face and deep-set grey eyes. He led the way
without speaking, and Cordova walked quickly after him. Alphonsine did
not follow, for she was responsible for the belongings that lay about
in the dressing-room. The other doors on the women's side, which is on
the stage left and the audience's right at the Opera, were all tightly
closed. The stage itself was not dark yet, and the carpenters were
putting away the scenery of the last act as methodically as if nothing
had happened.

'Do you know her?' Margaret asked of her companion as they hurried
along the passage that leads into the house.

'Barely. She is a Miss Bamberger, and she was to have been married the
day after to-morrow, poor thing--to a millionaire. I always forget his
name, though I've met him several times.'

'Van Torp?' asked Margaret as they hastened on.

'Yes. That's it--the Nickel Trust man, you know.'

'Yes,' Margaret answered in a low tone. 'I was asked to sing at the
wedding.'

They reached the door of the manager's room. The clerks from the
box-office and several other persons employed about the house were
whispering together in the little lobby. They made way for Cordova and
looked with curiosity at Griggs, who was a well-known man of letters.

Schreiermeyer stood at the half-closed inner door, evidently waiting.

'Come in,' he said to Margaret. 'The doctor is there.'

The room was flooded with electric light, and smelt of very strong
Havana cigars and brandy. Margaret saw a slight figure in a red silk
evening gown, lying at full length on an immense red leathern sofa. A
young doctor was kneeling on the floor, bending down to press his ear
against the girl's side; he moved his head continually, listening for
the beating of her heart. Her face was of a type every one knows, and
had a certain half-pathetic prettiness; the features were small, and
the chin was degenerate but delicately modelled. The rather colourless
fair hair was elaborately done; her thin cheeks were dreadfully white,
and her thin neck shrank painfully each time she breathed out, though
it grew smooth and full as she drew in her breath. A short string of
very large pearls was round her throat, and gleamed in the light as
her breathing moved them.

Schreiermeyer did not let Griggs come in, but went out to him, shut
the door and stood with his back to it.

Margaret did not look behind her, but crossed directly to the sofa and
leaned over the dying girl, who was conscious and looked at her with
inquiring eyes, not recognising her.

'You sent for me,' said the singer gently.

'Are you really Madame Cordova?' asked the girl in a faint tone.

It was as much as she could do to speak at all, and the doctor looked
up to Margaret and raised his hand in a warning gesture, meaning that
his patient should not be allowed to talk. She saw his movement and
smiled faintly, and shook her head.

'No one can save me,' she said to him, quite quietly and distinctly.
'Please leave us together, doctor.'

'I am altogether at a loss,' the doctor answered, speaking to Margaret
as he rose. 'There are no signs of asphyxia, yet the heart does not
respond to stimulants. I've tried nitro-glycerine--'

'Please, please go away!' begged the girl.

The doctor was a young surgeon from the nearest hospital, and hated to
leave his case. He was going to argue the point, but Margaret stopped
him.

'Go into the next room for a moment, please,' she said
authoritatively.

He obeyed with a bad grace, and went into the empty office which
adjoined the manager's room, but he left the door open. Margaret knelt
down in his place and took the girl's cold white hand.

'Can he hear?' asked the faint voice.

'Speak low,' Margaret answered. 'What can I do?'

'It is a secret,' said the girl. 'The last I shall ever have, but I
must tell some one before I die. I know about you. I know you are a
lady, and very good and kind, and I have always admired you so much!'

'You can trust me,' said the singer. 'What is the secret I am to keep
for you?'

'Do you believe in God? I do, but so many people don't nowadays, you
know. Tell me.'

'Yes,' Margaret answered, wondering. 'Yes, I do.'

'Will you promise, by the God you believe in?'

'I promise to keep your secret, so help me God in Heaven,' said
Margaret gravely.

The girl seemed relieved, and closed her eyes for a moment. She was so
pale and still that Margaret thought the end had come, but presently
she drew breath again and spoke, though it was clear that she had not
much strength left.

'You must not keep the secret always,' she said. 'You may tell him you
know it. Yes--let him know that you know--if you think it best--'

'Who is he?'

'Mr. Van Torp.'

'Yes?' Margaret bent her ear to the girl's lips and waited.

Again there was a pause of many seconds, and then the voice came
once more, with a great effort that only produced very faint sounds,
scarcely above a whisper.

'He did it.'

That was all. At long intervals the dying girl drew deep breaths,
longer and longer, and then no more. Margaret looked anxiously at the
still face for some time, and then straightened herself suddenly.

'Doctor! Doctor!' she cried.

The young man was beside her in an instant. For a full minute there
was no sound in the room, and he bent over the motionless figure.

'I'm afraid I can't do anything,' he said gently, and he rose to his
feet.

'Is she really dead?' Margaret asked, in an undertone.

'Yes. Failure of the heart, from shock.'

'Is that what you will call it?'

'That is what it is,' said the doctor with a little emphasis of
offence, as if his science had been doubted. 'You knew her, I
suppose?'

'No. I never saw her before. I will call Schreiermeyer.'

She stood still a moment longer, looking down at the dead face, and
she wondered what it all meant, and why the poor girl had sent for
her, and what it was that Mr. Van Torp had done. Then she turned very
slowly and went out.

'Dead, I suppose,' said Schreiermeyer as soon as he saw the
Primadonna's face. 'Her relations won't get here in time.'

Margaret nodded in silence and went on through the lobby.

'The rehearsal is at eleven,' the manager called out after her, in his
wooden voice.

She nodded again, but did not look back. Griggs had waited in order
to take her back to her dressing-room, and the two crossed the stage
together. It was almost quite dark now, and the carpenters were gone
away.

'Thank you,' Margaret said. 'If you don't care to go all the way back
you can get out by the stage door.'

'Yes. I know the way in this theatre. Before I say good-night, do you
mind telling me what the doctor said?'

'He said she died of failure of the heart, from shock. Those were his
words. Why do you ask?'

'Mere curiosity. I helped to carry her--that is, I carried her myself
to the manager's room, and she begged me to call you, so I came to
your door.'

'It was kind of you. Perhaps it made a difference to her, poor girl.
Good-night.'

'Good-night. When do you sail?'

'On Saturday. I sing "Juliet" on Friday night and sail the next
morning.'

'On the _Leofric_?'

'Yes.'

'So do I. We shall cross together.'

'How delightful! I'm so glad! Good-night again.'

Alphonsine was standing at the open door of the dressing-room in the
bright light, and Margaret nodded and went in. The maid looked after
the elderly man till he finally disappeared, and then she went in too
and locked the door after her.

Griggs walked home in the bitter March weather. When he was in New
York, he lived in rooms on the second floor of an old business
building not far from Fifth Avenue. He was quite alone in the house at
night, and had to walk up the stairs by the help of a little electric
pocket-lantern he carried. He let himself into his own door, turned
up the light, slipped off his overcoat and gloves, and went to the
writing-table to get his pipe. That is very often the first thing a
man does when he gets home at night.

The old briar pipe he preferred to any other lay on the blotting-paper
in the circle where the light was brightest. As he took it a stain on
his right hand caught his eye, and he dropped the pipe to look at
it. The blood was dark and was quite dry, and he could not find any
scratch to account for it. It was on the inner side of his right hand,
between the thumb and forefinger, and was no larger than an ordinary
watch.

'How very odd!' exclaimed Mr. Griggs aloud; and he turned his hand
this way and that under the electric lamp, looking for some small
wound which he supposed must have bled. There was a little more inside
his fingers, and between them, as if it had oozed through and then had
spread over his knuckles.

But he could find nothing to account for it. He was an elderly man who
had lived all over the world and had seen most things, and he was not
easily surprised, but he was puzzled now. Not the least strange thing
was that the stain should be as small as it was and yet so dark. He
crossed the room again and examined the front of his overcoat with the
most minute attention. It was made of a dark frieze, almost black,
on which a red stain would have shown very little; but after a very
careful search Griggs was convinced that the blood which had stained
his hand had not touched the cloth.

He went into his dressing-room and looked at his face in his
shaving-glass, but there was certainly no stain on the weather-beaten
cheeks or the furrowed forehead.

'How very odd!' he exclaimed a second time.

He washed his hands slowly and carefully, examining them again and
again, for he thought it barely possible that the skin might have been
cracked somewhere by the cutting March wind, and might have bled a
little, but he could not find the least sign of such a thing.

When he was finally convinced that he could not account for the stain
he had now washed off, he filled his old pipe thoughtfully and sat
down in a big shabby arm-chair beside the table to think over other
questions more easy of solution. For he was a philosophical man, and
when he could not understand a matter he was able to put it away in a
safe place, to be kept until he got more information about it.

The next morning, amidst the flamboyant accounts of the subterranean
explosion, and of the heroic conduct of Madame Margarita da Cordova,
the famous Primadonna, in checking a dangerous panic at the Opera,
all the papers found room for a long paragraph about Miss Ida H.
Bamberger, who had died at the theatre in consequence of the shock
her nerves had received, and who was to have married the celebrated
capitalist and philanthropist, Mr. Van Torp, only two days later.
There were various dramatic and heart-rending accounts of her death,
and most of them agreed that she had breathed her last amidst her
nearest and dearest, who had been with her all the evening.

But Mr. Griggs read these paragraphs thoughtfully, for he remembered
that he had found her lying in a heap behind a red baize door which
his memory could easily identify.

After all, the least misleading notice was the one in the column of
deaths:--

BAMBERGER.--On Wednesday, of heart-failure from shock, IDA HAMILTON,
only child of HANNAH MOON by her former marriage with ISIDORE
BAMBERGER. California papers please copy.




CHAPTER II


In the lives of professionals, whatever their profession may be, the
ordinary work of the day makes very little impression on the memory,
whereas a very strong and lasting one is often made by circumstances
which a man of leisure or a woman of the world might barely notice,
and would soon forget. In Margaret's life there were but two sorts of
days, those on which she was to sing and those on which she was at
liberty. In the one case she had a cutlet at five o'clock, and supper
when she came home; in the other, she dined like other people and went
to bed early. At the end of a season in New York, the evenings on
which she had sung all seemed to have been exactly alike; the people
had always applauded at the same places, she had always been called
out about the same number of times, she had always felt very much
the same pleasure and satisfaction, and she had invariably eaten her
supper with the same appetite. Actors lead far more emotional lives
than singers, partly because they have the excitement of a new piece
much more often, with the tremendous nervous strain of a first night,
and largely because they are not obliged to keep themselves in such
perfect training. To an actor a cold, an indigestion, or a headache
is doubtless an annoyance; but to a leading singer such an accident
almost always means the impossibility of appearing at all, with
serious loss of money to the artist, and grave disappointment to the
public. The result of all this is that singers, as a rule, are much
more normal, healthy, and well-balanced people than other musicians,
or than actors. Moreover they generally have very strong bodies and
constitutions to begin with, and when they have not they break down
young.

Paul Griggs had an old traveller's preference for having plenty of
time, and he was on board the steamer on Saturday a full hour before
she was to sail; his not very numerous belongings, which looked as
weather-beaten as himself, were piled up unopened in his cabin, and he
himself stood on the upper promenade deck watching the passengers as
they came on board. He was an observant man, and it interested him to
note the expression of each new face that appeared; for the fact
of starting on a voyage across the ocean is apt to affect people
inversely as their experience. Those who cross often look so
unconcerned that a casual observer might think they were not to start
at all, whereas those who are going for the first time are either
visibly flurried, or are posing to look as if they were not, though
they are intensely nervous about their belongings; or they try to
appear as if they belonged to the ship, or else as if the ship
belonged to them, making observations which are supposed to be
nautical, but which instantly stamp them as unutterable land-lubbers
in the shrewd estimation of the stewards; and the latter, as every old
hand is aware, always know everything much better than the captain.

Margaret Donne had been the most sensible and simple of young girls,
and when she appeared at the gangway very quietly dressed in brown,
with a brown fur collar, a brown hat, a brown veil, and a brown
parasol, there was really nothing striking to distinguish her from
other female passengers, except her good looks and her well-set-up
figure. Yet somehow it seems impossible for a successful primadonna
ever to escape notice. Instead of one maid, for instance, Cordova had
two, and they carried rather worn leathern boxes that were evidently
heavy jewel-cases, which they clutched with both hands and refused to
give up to the stewards. They also had about them the indescribable
air of rather aggressive assurance which belongs especially to
highly-paid servants, men and women. Their looks said to every one:
'We are the show and you are the public, so don't stand in the way,
for if you do the performance cannot go on!' They gave their orders
about their mistress's things to the chief steward as if he were
nothing better than a railway porter or a call-boy at the theatre;
and, strange to say, that exalted capitalist obeyed with a docility he
would certainly not have shown to any other passenger less than royal.
They knew their way everywhere, they knew exactly what the best of
everything was, and they made it clear that the great singer would
have nothing less than the very, very best. She had the best cabin
already, and she was to have the best seat at table, the best steward
and the best stewardess, and her deck-chair was to be always in the
best place on the upper promenade deck; and there was to be no mistake
about it; and if anybody questioned the right of Margarita da Cordova,
the great lyric soprano, to absolute precedence during the whole
voyage, from start to finish, her two maids would know the reason why,
and make the captain and all the ship's company wish they were dead.

That was their attitude.

But this was not all. There were the colleagues who came to see
Margaret off and wished that they were going too. In spite of the
windy weather there was Signor Pompeo Stromboli, the tenor, as broad
as any two ordinary men, in a fur coat of the most terribly expensive
sort, bringing an enormous box of chocolates with his best wishes; and
there was the great German dramatic barytone, Herr Tiefenbach, who
sang 'Amfortas' better than any one, and was a true musician as well
as a man of culture, and he brought Margaret a book which he insisted
that she must read on the voyage, called _The Genesis of the Tone
Epos_; and there was that excellent and useful little artist, Fräulein
Ottilie Braun, who never had an enemy in her life, who was always
ready to sing any part creditably at a moment's notice if one of the
leading artists broke down, and who was altogether one of the best,
kindest, and least conceited human beings that ever joined an opera
company. She brought her great colleague a little bunch of violets.

Least expected of them all, there was Schreiermeyer, with a basket
of grape fruit in his tightly-gloved podgy hands; and he was smiling
cheerfully, which was an event in itself. They followed Margaret up to
the promenade deck after her maids had gone below, and stood round her
in a group, all talking at once in different languages.

Griggs chanced to be the only other passenger on that part of the deck
and he joined the party, for he knew them all. Margaret gave him her
hand quietly and nodded to him. Signor Stromboli was effusive in his
greeting; Herr Tiefenbach gave him a solemn grip; little Fräulein
Ottilie smiled pleasantly, and Schreiermeyer put into his hands the
basket he carried, judging that as he could not get anything else out
of the literary man he could at least make him carry a parcel.

'Grape fruit for Cordova,' he observed. 'You can give it to the
steward, and tell him to keep the things in a cool place.'

Griggs took the basket with a slight smile, but Stromboli snatched it
from him instantly, and managed at the same time to seize upon the
book Herr Tiefenbach had brought without dropping his own big box of
sweetmeats.

'I shall give everything to the waiter!' he cried with exuberant
energy as he turned away. 'He shall take care of Cordova with his
conscience! I tell you, I will frighten him!'

This was possible, and even probable. Margaret looked after the broad
figure.

'Dear old Stromboli!' she laughed.

'He has the kindest heart in the world,' said little Fräulein Ottilie
Braun.

'He is no a musician,' observed Herr Tiefenbach; 'but he does not sing
out of tune.'

'He is a lunatic,' said Schreiermeyer gravely. 'All tenors are
lunatics--except about money,' he added thoughtfully.

'I think Stromboli is very sensible,' said Margaret, turning to
Griggs. 'He brings his little Calabrian wife and her baby out with
him, and they take a small house for the winter and Italian servants,
and live just as if they were in their own country and see only their
Italian friends--instead of being utterly wretched in a horrible
hotel.'

'For the modest consideration of a hundred dollars a day,' put in
Griggs, who was a poor man.

'I wish my bills were never more than that!' Margaret laughed.

'Yes,' said Schreiermeyer, still thoughtful. 'Stromboli understands
money. He is a man of business. He makes his wife cook for him.'

'I often cook for myself,' said Fräulein Ottilie quite simply. 'If I
had a husband, I would cook for him too!' She laughed like a child,
without the slightest sourness. 'It is easier to cook well than to
marry at all, even badly!'

'I do not at all agree with you,' answered Herr Tiefenbach severely.
'Without flattering myself, I may say that my wife married well; but
her potato dumplings are terrifying.'

'You were never married, were you?' Margaret asked, turning to Griggs
with a smile.

'No,' he answered. 'Can you make potato dumplings, and are you in
search of a husband?'

'It is the other way,' said Schreiermeyer, 'for the husbands are
always after her. Talking of marriage, that girl who died the other
night was to have been married to Mr. Van Torp yesterday, and they
were to have sailed with you this morning.'

'I saw his name on the--' Schreiermeyer began, but he was interrupted
by a tremendous blast from the ship's horn, the first warning for
non-passengers to go ashore.

Before the noise stopped Stromboli appeared again, looking very much
pleased with himself, and twisting up the short black moustache that
was quite lost on his big face. When he was nearer he desisted from
twirling, shook a fat forefinger at Margaret and laughed.

'Oh, well, then,' he cried, translating his Italian literally into
English, 'I've been in your room, Miss Cordova! Who is this Tom, eh?
Flowers from Tom, one! Sweets from Tom, two! A telegram from Tom,
three! Tom, Tom, Tom; it is full of Tom, her room! In the end, what
is this Tom? For me, I only know Tom the ruffian in the _Ballo in
Maschera_. That is all the Tom I know!'

They all looked at Margaret and laughed. She blushed a little, more
out of annoyance than from any other reason.

'The maids wished to put me out,' laughed Stromboli, 'but they could
not, because I am big. So I read everything. If I tell you I read,
what harm is there?'

'None whatever,' Margaret answered, 'except that it is bad manners to
open other people's telegrams.'

'Oh, that! The maid had opened it with water, and was reading when I
came. So I read too! You shall find it all well sealed again, have no
fear! They all do so.'

'Pleasant journey,' said Schreiermeyer abruptly. 'I'm going ashore.
I'll see you in Paris in three weeks.'

'Read the book,' said Herr Tiefenbach earnestly, as he shook hands.
'It is a deep book.'

'Do not forget me!' cried Stromboli sentimentally, and he kissed
Margaret's gloves several times.

'Good-bye,' said Fräulein Ottilie. 'Every one is sorry when you go!'

Margaret was not a gushing person, but she stooped and kissed the
cheerful little woman, and pressed her small hand affectionately.

'And everybody is glad when you come, my dear,' she said.

For Fräulein Ottilie was perhaps the only person in the company whom
Cordova really liked, and who did not jar dreadfully on her at one
time or another.

Another blast from the horn and they were all gone, leaving her and
Griggs standing by the rail on the upper promenade deck. The little
party gathered again on the pier when they had crossed the plank, and
made farewell signals to the two, and then disappeared. Unconsciously
Margaret gave a little sigh of relief, and Griggs noticed it, as he
noticed most things, but said nothing.

There was silence for a while, and the gangplank was still in place
when the horn blew a third time, longer than before.

'How very odd!' exclaimed Griggs, a moment after the sound had ceased.

'What is odd?' Margaret asked.

She saw that he was looking down, and her eyes followed his. A
square-shouldered man in mourning was walking up the plank in a
leisurely way, followed by a well-dressed English valet, who carried a
despatch-box in a leathern case.

'It's not possible!' Margaret whispered in great surprise.

'Perfectly possible,' Griggs answered, in a low voice. 'That is Rufus
Van Torp.'

Margaret drew back from the rail, though the new comer was already out
of sight on the lower promenade deck, to which the plank was laid to
suit the height of the tide. She moved away from the door of the first
cabin companion.

Griggs went with her, supposing that she wished to walk up and down.
Numbers of other passengers were strolling about on the side next to
the pier, waiting to see the start. Margaret went on forward, turned
the deck-house and walked to the rail on the opposite side, where
there was no one. Griggs glanced at her face and thought that she
seemed disturbed. She looked straight before her at the closed iron
doors of the next pier, at which no ship was lying.

'I wish I knew you better,' she said suddenly.

Griggs looked at her quietly. It did not occur to him to make a
trivial and complimentary answer to this advance, such as most men of
the world would have made, even at his age.

'I shall be very glad if we ever know each other better,' he said
after a short pause.

'So shall I.'

She leaned upon the rail and looked down at the eddying water. The
tide had turned and was beginning to go out. Griggs watched her
handsome profile in silence for a time.

'You have not many intimate friends, have you?' she asked presently.

'No, only one or two.'

She smiled.

'I'm not trying to get confidences from you. But really, that is very
vague. You must surely know whether you have only one, or whether
there is another. I'm not suggesting myself as a third, either!'

'Perhaps I'm over-cautious,' Griggs said. 'It does not matter. You
began by saying that you wished you knew me better. You meant that
if you did, you would either tell me something which you don't tell
everybody, or you would come to me for advice about something, or you
would ask me to do something for you. Is that it?'

'I suppose so.'

'It was not very hard to guess. I'll answer the three cases. If you
want to tell me a secret, don't. If you want advice without telling
everything about the case, it will be worthless. But if there is
anything I can do for you, I'll do it if I can, and I won't ask any
questions.'

'That's kind and sensible,' Margaret answered. 'And I should not be in
the least afraid to tell you anything. You would not repeat it.'

'No, certainly not. But some day, unless we became real friends, you
would think that I might, and then you would be very sorry.'

A short pause followed.

'We are moving,' Margaret said, glancing at the iron doors again.

'Yes, we are off.'

There was another pause. Then Margaret stood upright and turned her
face to her companion. She did not remember that she had ever looked
steadily into his eyes since she had known him.

They were grey and rather deeply set under grizzled eyebrows that
were growing thick and rough with advancing years, and they met hers
quietly. She knew at once that she could bear their scrutiny for any
length of time without blushing or feeling nervous, though there was
something in them that was stronger than she.

'It's this,' she said at last, as if she had been talking and had
reached a conclusion. 'I'm alone, and I'm a little frightened.'

'You?' Griggs smiled rather incredulously.

'Yes. Of course I'm used to travelling without any one and taking care
of myself. Singers and actresses are just like men in that, and it did
not occur to me this morning that this trip could be different from
any other.'

'No. Why should it be so different? I don't understand.'

'You said you would do something for me without asking questions. Will
you?'

'If I can.'

'Keep Mr. Van Torp away from me during the voyage. I mean, as much
as you can without being openly rude. Have my chair put next to some
other woman's and your own on my other side. Do you mind doing that?'

Griggs smiled.

'No,' he said, 'I don't mind.'

'And if I am walking on deck and he joins me, come and walk beside me
too. Will you? Are you quite sure you don't mind?'

'Yes.' He was still smiling. 'I'm quite certain that I don't dislike
the idea.'

'I wish I were sure of being seasick,' Margaret said thoughtfully.
'It's bad for the voice, but it would be a great resource.'

'As a resource, I shall try to be a good substitute for it,' said
Griggs.

Margaret realised what she had said and laughed.

'But it is no laughing matter,' she answered, her face growing grave
again after a moment.

Griggs had promised not to ask questions, and he expressed no
curiosity.

'As soon as you go below I'll see about the chair,' he said.

'My cabin is on this deck,' Margaret answered. 'I believe I have a
tiny little sitting-room, too. It's what they call a suite in their
magnificent language, and the photographs in the advertisements make
it look like a palatial apartment!'

She left the rail as she spoke, and found her own door on the same
side of the ship, not very far away.

'Here it is,' she said. 'Thank you very much.'

She looked into his eyes again for an instant and went in.

She had forgotten Signor Stromboli and what he had said, for her
thoughts had been busy with a graver matter, but she smiled when she
saw the big bunch of dark red carnations in a water-jug on the table,
and the little cylinder-shaped parcel which certainly contained a
dozen little boxes of the chocolate 'oublies' she liked, and the
telegram, with its impersonal-looking address, waiting to be opened by
her after having been opened, read, and sealed again by her thoughtful
maids. Such trifles as the latter circumstance did not disturb her in
the least, for though she was only a young woman of four and twenty,
a singer and a musician, she had a philosophical mind, and considered
that if virtue has nothing to do with the greatness of princes, moral
worth need not be a clever lady's-maid's strong point.

'Tom' was her old friend Edmund Lushington, one of the most
distinguished of the younger writers of the day. He was the only son
of the celebrated soprano, Madame Bonanni, now retired from the stage,
by her marriage with an English gentleman of the name of Goodyear, and
he had been christened Thomas. But his mother had got his name and
surname legally changed when he was a child, thinking that it would be
a disadvantage to him to be known as her son, as indeed it might have
been at first; even now the world did not know the truth about his
birth, but it would not have cared, since he had won his own way.

Margaret meant to marry him if she married at all, for he had been
faithful in his devotion to her nearly three years; and his rivalry
with Constantine Logotheti, her other serious adorer, had brought some
complications into her life. But on mature reflection she was sure
that she did not wish to marry any one for the present. So many of
her fellow-singers had married young and married often, evidently
following the advice of a great American humorist, and mostly with
disastrous consequences, that Margaret preferred to be an exception,
and to marry late if at all.

In the glaring light of the twentieth century it at last clearly
appears that marriageable young women have always looked upon marriage
as the chief means of escape from the abject slavery and humiliating
dependence hitherto imposed upon virgins between fifteen and fifty
years old. Shakespeare lacked the courage to write the 'Seven Ages of
Woman,' a matter the more to be regretted as no other writer has ever
possessed enough command of the English language to describe more than
three out of the seven without giving offence: namely, youth, which
lasts from sixteen to twenty; perfection, which begins at twenty and
lasts till further notice; and old age, which women generally place
beyond seventy, though some, whose strength is not all sorrow and
weakness even then, do not reach it till much later. If Shakespeare
had dared he would have described with poetic fire the age of the girl
who never marries. But this is a digression. The point is that the
truth about marriage is out, since the modern spinster has shown the
sisterhood how to live, and an amazing number of women look upon
wedlock as a foolish thing, vainly imagined, never necessary, and
rarely amusing.

The state of perpetual unsanctified virginity, however, is not for
poor girls, nor for operatic singers, nor for kings' daughters, none
of whom, for various reasons, can live, or are allowed to live,
without husbands. Unless she be a hunchback, an unmarried royal
princess is almost as great an exception as a white raven or a cat
without a tail; a primadonna without a husband alive, dead, or
divorced, is hardly more common; and poor girls marry to live. But
give a modern young woman a decent social position, with enough money
for her wants and an average dose of assurance, and she becomes so
fastidious in the choice of a mate that no man is good enough for
her till she is too old to be good enough for any man. Even then the
chances are that she will not deeply regret her lost opportunities,
and though her married friends will tell her that she has made a
mistake, half of them will envy her in secret, the other half will not
pity her much, and all will ask her to their dinner-parties, because a
woman without a husband is such a convenience.

In respect to her art Margarita da Cordova was in all ways a thorough
artist, endowed with the gifts, animated by the feelings, and
afflicted with the failings that usually make up an artistic nature.
But Margaret Donne was a sound and healthy English girl who had been
brought up in the right way by a very refined and cultivated father
and mother who loved her devotedly. If they had lived she would not
have gone upon the stage; for as her mother's friend Mrs. Rushmore had
often told her, the mere thought of such a life for their daughter
would have broken their hearts. She was a grown woman now, and high
on the wave of increasing success and celebrity, but she still had
a childish misgiving that she had disobeyed her parents and done
something very wrong, just as when she had surreptitiously got into
the jam cupboard at the age of five.

Yet there are old-fashioned people alive even now who might think that
there was less harm in becoming a public singer than in keeping Edmund
Lushington dangling on a string for two years and more. Those things
are matters of opinion. Margaret would have answered that if he
dangled it was his misfortune and not her fault, since she never, in
her own opinion, had done anything to keep him, and would not have
been broken-hearted if he had gone away, though she would have missed
his friendship very much. Of the two, the man who had disturbed her
maiden peace of mind was Logotheti, whom she feared and sometimes
hated, but who had an inexplicable power over her when they met: the
sort of fateful influence which honest Britons commonly ascribe to all
foreigners with black hair, good teeth, diamond studs, and the other
outward signs of wickedness. Twice, at least, Logotheti had behaved in
a manner positively alarming, and on the second occasion he had very
nearly succeeded in carrying her off bodily from the theatre to
his yacht, a fate from which Lushington and his mother had been
instrumental in saving her. Such doings were shockingly lawless, but
they showed a degree of recklessly passionate admiration which was
flattering from a young financier who was so popular with women that
he found it infinitely easier to please than to be pleased.

Perhaps, if Logotheti could have put on a little Anglo-Saxon coolness,
Margaret might have married him by this time. Perhaps she would have
married Lushington, if he could have suddenly been animated by a
little Greek fire. As things stood, she told herself that she did not
care to take a man who meant to be not only her master but her tyrant,
nor one who seemed more inclined to be her slave than her master.

Meanwhile, however, it was the Englishman who kept himself constantly
in mind with her by an unbroken chain of small attentions that often
made her smile but sometimes really touched her. Any one could cable
'Pleasant voyage,' and sign the telegram 'Tom,' which gave it a
friendly and encouraging look, because somehow 'Tom' is a cheerful,
plucky little name, very unlike 'Edmund.' But it was quite another
matter, being in England, to take the trouble to have carnations of
just the right shade fresh on her cabin table at the moment of her
sailing from New York, and beside them the only sort of chocolates she
liked. That was more than a message, it was a visit, a presence, a
real reaching out of hand to hand.

Logotheti, on the contrary, behaved as if he had forgotten Margaret's
existence as soon as he was out of her sight; and they now no longer
met often, but when they did he had a way of taking up the thread as
if there had been no interval, which was almost as effective as his
rival's method; for it produced the impression that he had been
thinking of her only, and of nothing else in the world since the last
meeting, and could never again give a thought to any other woman. This
also was flattering. He never wrote to her, he never telegraphed good
wishes for a journey or a performance, he never sent her so much as a
flower; he acted as if he were really trying to forget her, as perhaps
he was. But when they met, he was no sooner in the same room with her
than she felt the old disturbing influence she feared and yet
somehow desired in spite of herself, and much as she preferred the
companionship of Lushington and liked his loyal straightforward ways,
and admired his great talent, she felt that he paled and seemed less
interesting beside the vivid personality of the Greek financier.

He was vivid; no other word expresses what he was, and if that one
cannot properly be applied to a man, so much the worse for our
language. His colouring was too handsome, his clothes were too good,
his shoes were too shiny, his ties too surprising, and he not only
wore diamonds and rubies, but very valuable ones. Yet he was not
vulgarly gorgeous; he was Oriental. No one would say that a Chinese
idol covered with gold and precious stones was overdressed, but it
would be out of place in a Scotch kirk; the minister would be thrown
into the shade and the congregation would look at the idol. In
society, which nowadays is far from a chiaroscuro, everybody looked at
Logotheti. If he had come from any place nearer than Constantinople
people would have smiled and perhaps laughed at him; as it was, he was
an exotic, and besides, he had the reputation of being dangerous to
women's peace, and extremely awkward to meddle with in a quarrel.

Margaret sat some time in her little sitting-room reflecting on these
things, for she knew that before many days were past she must meet
her two adorers; and when she had thought enough about both, she gave
orders to her maids about arranging her belongings. By and by she went
to luncheon and found herself alone at some distance from the other
passengers, next to the captain's empty seat; but she was rather glad
that her neighbours had not come to table, for she got what she wanted
very quickly and had no reason for waiting after she had finished.

Then she took a book and went on deck again, and Alphonsine found her
chair on the sunny side and installed her in it very comfortably and
covered her up, and to her own surprise she felt that she was very
sleepy; so that just as she was wondering why, she dozed off and began
to dream that she was Isolde, on board of Tristan's ship, and that she
was singing the part, though she had never sung it and probably never
would.

When she opened her eyes again there was no land in sight, and the big
steamer was going quietly with scarcely any roll. She looked aft and
saw Paul Griggs leaning against the rail, smoking; and she turned her
head the other way, and the chair next to her own on that side was
occupied by a very pleasant-looking young woman who was sitting up
straight and showing the pictures in a book to a beautiful little girl
who stood beside her.

The lady had a very quiet healthy face and smooth brown hair, and was
simply and sensibly dressed. Margaret at once decided that she was not
the child's mother, nor an elder sister, but some one who had charge
of her, though not exactly a governess. The child was about nine years
old; she had a quantity of golden hair that waved naturally, and a
spiritual face with deep violet eyes, a broad white forehead and a
pathetic little mouth.

She examined each picture, and then looked up quickly at the lady,
keeping her wide eyes fixed on the latter's face with an expression of
watchful interest. The lady explained each picture to her, but in such
a soft whisper that Margaret could not hear a sound. Yet the child
evidently understood every word easily. It was natural to suppose that
the lady spoke under her breath in order not to disturb Margaret while
she was asleep.

'It is very kind of you to whisper,' said the Primadonna graciously,
'but I am awake now.'

The lady turned with a pleasant smile.

'Thank you,' she answered.

The child did not notice Margaret's little speech, but looked up from
the book for the explanation of the next picture.

'It is the inside of the Colosseum in Rome, and you will see it
before long,' said the lady very distinctly. 'I have told you how the
gladiators fought there, and how Saint Ignatius was sent all the way
from Antioch to be devoured by lions there, like many other martyrs.'

The little girl watched her face intently, nodded gravely, and looked
down at the picture again, but said nothing. The lady turned to
Margaret.

'She was born deaf and dumb,' she said quietly, 'but I have taught her
to understand from the lips, and she can already speak quite well. She
is very clever.'

'Poor little thing!' Margaret looked at the girl with increasing
interest. 'Such a little beauty, too! What is her name?'

'Ida--'

The child had turned over the pages to another picture, and now looked
up for the explanation of it. Griggs had finished his cigar and came
and sat down on Margaret's other side.




CHAPTER III


The _Leofric_ was three days out, and therefore half-way over the
ocean, for she was a fast boat, but so far Griggs had not been called
upon to hinder Mr. Van Torp from annoying Margaret. Mr. Van Torp had
not been on deck; in fact, he had not been seen at all since he had
disappeared into his cabin a quarter of an hour before the steamer had
left the pier. There was a good deal of curiosity about him amongst
the passengers, as there would have been about the famous Primadonna
if she had not come punctually to every meal, and if she had not been
equally regular in spending a certain number of hours on deck every
day.

At first every one was anxious to have what people call a 'good look'
at her, because all the usual legends were already repeated about her
wherever she went. It was said that she was really an ugly woman of
thirty-five who had been married to a Spanish count of twice that
age, and that he had died leaving her penniless, so that she had been
obliged to support herself by singing. Others were equally sure that
she was a beautiful escaped nun, who had been forced to take the veil
in a convent in Seville by cruel parents, but who had succeeded in
getting herself carried off by a Polish nobleman disguised as a
priest. Every one remembered the marvellous voice that used to sing so
high above all the other nuns, behind the lattice on Sunday afternoons
at the church of the Dominican Convent. That had been the voice of
Margarita da Cordova, and she could never go back to Spain, for if she
did the Inquisition would seize upon her, and she would be tortured
and probably burnt alive to encourage the other nuns.

This was very romantic, but unfortunately there was a man who said he
knew the plain truth about her, and that she was just a good-looking
Irish girl whose father used to play the flute at a theatre in Dublin,
and whose mother kept a sweetshop in Queen Street. The man who knew
this had often seen the shop, which was conclusive.

Margaret showed herself daily and the myths lost value, for every
one saw that she was neither an escaped Spanish nun nor the gifted
offspring of a Dublin flute-player and a female retailer of
bull's-eyes and butterscotch, but just a handsome, healthy,
well-brought-up young Englishwoman, who called herself Miss Donne in
private life.

But gossip, finding no hold upon her, turned and rent Mr. Van Torp,
who dwelt within his tent like Achilles, but whether brooding or
sea-sick no one was ever to know. The difference of opinion about him
was amazing. Some said he had no heart, since he had not even waited
for the funeral of the poor girl who was to have been his wife.
Others, on the contrary, said that he was broken-hearted, and that
his doctor had insisted upon his going abroad at once, doubtless
considering, as the best practitioners often do, that it is wisest
to send a patient who is in a dangerous condition to distant shores,
where some other doctor will get the credit of having killed him or
driven him mad. Some said that Mr. Van Torp was concerned in the
affair of that Chinese loan, which of course explained why he was
forced to go to Europe in spite of the dreadful misfortune that had
happened to him. The man who knew everything hinted darkly that Mr.
Van Torp was not really solvent, and that he had perhaps left the
country just at the right moment.

'That is nonsense,' said Miss More to Margaret in an undertone, for
they had both heard what had just been said.

Miss More was the lady in charge of the pretty deaf child, and the
latter was curled up in the next chair with a little piece of crochet
work. Margaret had soon found out that Miss More was a very nice
woman, after her own taste, who was given neither to flattery nor to
prying, the two faults from which celebrities are generally made to
suffer most by fellow-travellers who make their acquaintance. Miss
More was evidently delighted to find herself placed on deck next to
the famous singer, and Margaret was so well satisfied that the deck
steward had already received a preliminary tip, with instructions to
keep the chairs together during the voyage.

'Yes,' said Margaret, in answer to Miss More's remark. 'I don't
believe there is the least reason for thinking that Mr. Van Torp is
not immensely rich. Do you know him?'

'Yes.'

Miss More did not seem inclined to enlarge upon the fact, and her face
was thoughtful after she had said the one word; so was Margaret's tone
when she answered:

'So do I.'

Each of the young women understood that the other did not care to
talk of Mr. Van Torp. Margaret glanced sideways at her neighbour and
wondered vaguely whether the latter's experience had been at all like
her own, but she could not see anything to make her think so. Miss
More had a singularly pleasant expression and a face that made one
trust her at once, but she was far from beautiful, and would hardly
pass for pretty beside such a good-looking woman as Margaret, who
after all was not what people call an out-and-out beauty. It was odd
that the quiet lady-like teacher should have answered monosyllabically
in that tone. She felt Margaret's sidelong look of inquiry, and turned
half round after glancing at little Ida, who was very busy with her
crochet.

'I'm afraid you may have misunderstood me,' she said, smiling. 'If I
did not say any more it is because he himself does not wish people to
talk of what he does.'

'I assure you, I'm not curious,' Margaret answered, smiling too. 'I'm
sorry if I looked as if I were.'

'No--you misunderstood me, and it was a little my fault. Mr. Van Torp
is doing something very, very kind which it was impossible that I
should not know of, and he has asked me not to tell any one.'

'I see,' Margaret answered. 'Thank you for telling me. I am glad to
know that he--'

She checked herself. She detested and feared the man, for reasons of
her own, and she found it hard to believe that he could do something
'very, very kind' and yet not wish it to be known. He did not strike
her as being the kind of person who would go out of his way to hide
his light under a bushel. Yet Miss More's tone had been quiet and
earnest. Perhaps he had employed her to teach some poor deaf and dumb
child, like little Ida. Her words seemed to imply this, for she had
said that it had been impossible that she should not know; that is,
he had been forced to ask her advice or help, and her help and advice
could only be considered indispensable where her profession as a
teacher of the deaf and dumb was concerned.

Miss More was too discreet to ask the question which Margaret's
unfinished sentence suggested, but she would not let the speech pass
quite unanswered.

'He is often misjudged,' she said. 'In business he may be what many
people say he is. I don't understand business! But I have known him to
help people who needed help badly and who never guessed that he even
knew their names.'

'You must be right,' Margaret answered.

She remembered the last words of the girl who had died in the
manager's room at the theatre. There had been a secret. The secret
was that Mr. Van Torp had done the thing, whatever it was. She had
probably not known what she was saying, but it had been on her mind to
say that Mr. Van Torp had done it, the man she was to have married.
Margaret's first impression had been that the thing done must have
been something very bad, because she herself disliked the man so
much; but Miss More knew him, and since he often did 'very, very kind
things,' it was possible that the particular action of which the dying
girl was thinking might have been a charitable one; possibly he had
confided the secret to her. Margaret smiled rather cruelly at her own
superior knowledge of the world--yes, he had told the girl about that
'secret' charity in order to make a good impression on her! Perhaps
that was his favourite method of interesting women; if it was, he
had not invented it. Margaret thought she could have told Miss More
something which would have thrown another light on Mr. Van Torp's
character.

Her reflections had led her back to the painful scene at the theatre,
and she remembered the account of it the next day, and the fact that
the girl's name had been Ida. To change the subject she asked her
neighbour an idle question.

'What is the little girl's full name?' she inquired.

'Ida Moon,' answered Miss More.

'Moon?' Margaret turned her head sharply. 'May I ask if she is any
relation of the California Senator who died last year?'

'She is his daughter,' said Miss More quietly.

Margaret laid one hand on the arm of her chair and leaned forward a
little, so as to see the child better.

'Really!' she exclaimed, rather deliberately, as if she had chosen
that particular word out of a number that suggested themselves.
'Really!' she repeated, still more slowly, and then leaned back again
and looked at the grey waves.

She remembered the notice of Miss Bamberger's death. It had described
the deceased as the only child of Hannah Moon by her former marriage
with Isidore Bamberger. But Hannah Moon, as Margaret happened to know,
was now the widow of Senator Alvah Moon. Therefore the little deaf
child was the half-sister of the girl who had died at the theatre in
Margaret's arms and had been christened by the same name. Therefore,
also, she was related to Margaret, whose mother had been the
California magnate's cousin.

'How small the world is!' Margaret said in a low voice as she looked
at the grey waves.

She wondered whether little Ida had ever heard of her half-sister, and
what Miss More knew about it all.

'How old is Mrs. Moon?' she asked.

'I fancy she must be forty, or near that. I know that she was nearly
thirty years younger than the Senator, but I never saw her.'

'You never saw her?' Margaret was surprised.

'No,' Miss More answered. 'She is insane, you know. She went quite
mad soon after the little girl was born. It was very painful for
the Senator. Her delusion was that he was her divorced husband, Mr.
Bamberger, and when the child came into the world she insisted that
it should be called Ida, and that she had no other. Mr. Bamberger's
daughter was Ida, you know. It was very strange. Mrs. Moon was
convinced that she was forced to live her life over again, year by
year, as an expiation for something she had done. The doctors say it
is a hopeless case. I really think it shortened the Senator's life.'

Margaret did not think that the world had any cause to complain of
Mrs. Moon on that account.

'So this child is quite alone in the world,' she said.

'Yes. Her father is dead and her mother is in an asylum.'

'Poor little thing!'

The two young women were leaning back in their chairs, their faces
turned towards each other as they talked, and Ida was still busy with
her crochet.

'Luckily she has a sunny nature,' said Miss More. 'She is interested
in everything she sees and hears.' She laughed a little. 'I always
speak of it as hearing,' she added, 'for it is quite as quick, when
there is light enough. You know that, since you have talked with her.'

'Yes. But in the dark, how do you make her understand?'

'She can generally read what I say by laying her hand on my lips; but
besides that, we have the deaf and dumb alphabet, and she can feel my
fingers as I make the letters.'

'You have been with her a long time, I suppose,' Margaret said.

'Since she was three years old.'

'California is a beautiful country, isn't it?' asked Margaret after a
pause.

She put the question idly, for she was thinking how hard it must be to
teach deaf and dumb children. Miss More's answer surprised her.

'I have never been there.'

'But, surely, Senator Moon lived in San Francisco,' Margaret said.

'Yes. But the child was sent to New England when she was three,
and never went back again. We have been living in the country near
Boston.'

'And the Senator used to pay you a visit now and then, of course, when
he was alive. He must have been immensely pleased by the success of
your teaching.'

Though Margaret felt that she was growing more curious about little
Ida than she often was about any one, it did not occur to her that the
question she now suggested, rather than asked, was an indiscreet one,
and she was surprised by her companion's silence. She had already
discovered that Miss More was one of those literally truthful people
who never let an inaccurate statement pass their lips, and who will
be obstinately silent rather than answer a leading question, quite
regardless of the fact that silence is sometimes the most direct
answer that can be given. On the present occasion Miss More said
nothing and turned her eyes to the sea, leaving Margaret to make any
deduction she pleased; but only one suggested itself, namely, that the
deceased Senator had taken very little interest in the child of his
old age, and had felt no affection for her. Margaret wondered whether
he had left her rich, but Miss More's silence told her that she had
already asked too many questions.

She glanced down the long line of passengers beyond Miss More and Ida.
Men, women, and children lay side by side in their chairs, wrapped and
propped like a row of stuffed specimens in a museum. They were not
interesting, Margaret thought; for those who were awake all looked
discontented, and those who were asleep looked either ill or
apoplectic. Perhaps half of them were crossing because they were
obliged to go to Europe for one reason or another; the other half were
going in an aimless way, because they had got into the habit while
they were young, or had been told that it was the right thing to do,
or because their doctors sent them abroad to get rid of them. The grey
light from the waves was reflected on the immaculate and shiny white
paint, and shed a cold glare on the commonplace faces and on the
plaid rugs, and on the vivid magazines which many of the people were
reading, or pretending to read; for most persons only look at the
pictures nowadays, and read the advertisements. A steward in a very
short jacket was serving perfectly unnecessary cups of weak broth on a
big tray, and a great number of the passengers took some, with a vague
idea that the Company's feelings might be hurt if they did not, or
else that they would not be getting their money's worth.

Between the railing and the feet of the passengers, which stuck out
over the foot-rests of their chairs to different lengths according
to the height of the possessors, certain energetic people walked
ceaselessly up and down the deck, sometimes flattening themselves
against the railing to let others who met them pass by, and sometimes,
when the ship rolled a little, stumbling against an outstretched foot
or two without making any elaborate apology for doing so.

Margaret only glanced at the familiar sight, but she made a little
movement of annoyance almost directly, and took up the book that lay
open and face downwards on her knee; she became absorbed in it so
suddenly as to convey the impression that she was not really reading
at all.

She had seen Mr. Van Torp and Paul Griggs walking together and coming
towards her.

The millionaire was shorter than his companion and more clumsily made,
though not by any means a stout man. Though he did not look like a
soldier he had about him the very combative air which belongs to so
many modern financiers of the Christian breed. There was the bull-dog
jaw, the iron mouth, and the aggressive blue eye of the man who takes
and keeps by force rather than by astuteness. Though his face had
lines in it and his complexion was far from brilliant he looked
scarcely forty years of age, and his short, rough, sandy hair had not
yet begun to turn grey.

He was not ugly, but Margaret had always seen something in his face
that repelled her. It was some lack of proportion somewhere, which
she could not precisely define; it was something that was out of
the common type of faces, but that was disquieting rather than
interesting. Instead of wondering what it meant, those who noticed it
wished it were not there.

Margaret was sure she could distinguish his heavy step from Griggs's
when he was near her, but she would not look up from her book till he
stopped and spoke to her.

'Good-morning, Madame Cordova; how are you this morning?' he inquired,
holding out his hand. 'You didn't expect to see me on board, did you?'

His tone was hard and business-like, but he lifted his yachting cap
politely as he held out his hand. Margaret hesitated a moment before
taking it, and when she moved her own he was already holding his out
to Miss More.

'Good-morning, Miss More; how are you this morning?'

Miss More leaned forward and put down one foot as if she would have
risen in the presence of the great man, but he pushed her back by her
hand which he held, and proceeded to shake hands with the little girl.

'Good-morning, Miss Ida; how are you this morning?'

Margaret felt sure that if he had shaken hands with a hundred people
he would have repeated the same words to each without any variation.
She looked at Griggs imploringly, and glanced at his vacant chair on
her right side. He did not answer by sitting down, because the action
would have been too like deliberately telling Mr. Van Torp to go away,
but he began to fold up the chair as if he were going to take it away,
and then he seemed to find that there was something wrong with one of
its joints, and altogether it gave him a good deal of trouble, and
made it quite impossible for the great man to get any nearer to
Margaret.

Little Ida had taken Mr. Van Torp's proffered hand, and had watched
his hard lips when he spoke. She answered quite clearly and rather
slowly, in the somewhat monotonous voice of those born deaf who have
learned to speak.

'I'm very well, thank you, Mr. Van Torp. I hope you are quite well.'

Margaret heard, and saw the child's face, and at once decided that, if
the little girl knew of her own relationship to Ida Bamberger, she was
certainly ignorant of the fact that her half-sister had been engaged
to Mr. Van Torp, when she had died so suddenly less than a week ago.
Little Ida's manner strengthened the impression in Margaret's mind
that the millionaire was having her educated by Miss More. Yet it
seemed impossible that the rich old Senator should not have left her
well provided.

'I see you've made friends with Madame Cordova,' said Mr. Van Torp.
'I'm very glad, for she's quite an old friend of mine too.'

Margaret made a slight movement, but said nothing. Miss More saw her
annoyance and intervened by speaking to the financier.

'We began to fear that we might not see you at all on the voyage,' she
said, in a tone of some concern. 'I hope you have not been suffering
again.'

Margaret wondered whether she meant to ask if he had been sea-sick;
what she said sounded like an inquiry about some more or less frequent
indisposition, though Mr. Van Torp looked as strong as a ploughman.

In answer to the question he glanced sharply at Miss More, and shook
his head.

'I've been too busy to come on deck,' he said, rather curtly, and he
turned to Margaret again.

'Will you take a little walk with me, Madame Cordova?' he asked.

Not having any valid excuse for refusing, Margaret smiled, for the
first time since she had seen him on deck.

'I'm so comfortable!' she answered. 'Don't make me get out of my rug!'

'If you'll take a little walk with me, I'll give you a pretty
present,' said Mr. Van Torp playfully.

Margaret thought it best to laugh and shake her head at this singular
offer. Little Ida had been watching them both.

'You'd better go with him,' said the child gravely. 'He makes lovely
presents.'

'Does he?' Margaret laughed again.

'"A fortress that parleys, or a woman who listens, is lost,'" put in
Griggs, quoting an old French proverb.

'Then I won't listen,' Margaret said.

Mr. Van Torp planted himself more firmly on his sturdy legs, for the
ship was rolling a little.

'I'll give you a book, Madame Cordova,' he said.

His habit of constantly repeating the name of the person with whom
he was talking irritated her extremely. She was not smiling when she
answered.

'Thank you. I have more books than I can possibly read.'

'Yes. But you have not the one I will give you, and it happens to be
the only one you want.'

'But I don't want any book at all! I don't want to read!'

'Yes, you do, Madame Cordova. You want to read this one, and it's the
only copy on board, and if you'll take a little walk with me I'll give
it to you.'

As he spoke he very slowly drew a new book from the depths of the wide
pocket in his overcoat, but only far enough to show Margaret the first
words of the title, and he kept his aggressive blue eyes fixed on her
face. A faint blush came into her cheeks at once and he let the volume
slip back. Griggs, being on his other side, had not seen it, and it
meant nothing to Miss More. To the latter's surprise Margaret pushed
her heavy rug from her knees and let her feet slip from the chair to
the ground. Her eyes met Griggs's as she rose, and seeing that his
look asked her whether he was to carry out her previous instructions
and walk beside her, she shook her head.

'Nine times out of ten, proverbs are true,' he said in a tone of
amusement.

Mr. Van Torp's hard face expressed no triumph when Margaret stood
beside him, ready to walk. She had yielded, as he had been sure she
would; he turned from the other passengers to go round to the weather
side of the ship, and she went with him submissively. Just at the
point where the wind and the fine spray would have met them if they
had gone on, he stopped in the lee of a big ventilator. There was no
one in sight of them now.

'Excuse me for making you get up,' he said. 'I wanted to see you alone
for a moment.'

Margaret said nothing in answer to this apology, and she met his fixed
eyes coldly.

'You were with Miss Bamberger when she died,' he said.

Margaret bent her head gravely in assent. His face was as
expressionless as a stone.

'I thought she might have mentioned me before she died,' he said
slowly.

'Yes,' Margaret answered after a moment's pause; 'she did.'

'What did she say?'

'She told me that it was a secret, but that I was to tell you what she
said, if I thought it best.'

'Are you going to tell me?'

It was impossible to guess whether he was controlling any emotion or
not; but if the men with whom he had done business where large sums
were involved had seen him now and had heard his voice, they would
have recognised the tone and the expression.

'She said, "he did it,"' Margaret answered slowly, after a moment's
thought.

'Was that all she said?'

'That was all. A moment later she was dead. Before she said it, she
told me it was a secret, and she made me promise solemnly never to
tell any one but you.'

'It's not much of a secret, is it?' As he spoke, Mr. Van Torp turned
his eyes from Margaret's at last and looked at the grey sea beyond the
ventilator.

'Such as it is, I have told it to you because she wished me to,'
answered Margaret. 'But I shall never tell any one else. It will be
all the easier to be silent, as I have not the least idea what she
meant.'

'She meant our engagement,' said Mr. Van Torp in a matter-of-fact
tone. 'We had broken it off that afternoon. She meant that it was I
who did it, and so it was. Perhaps she did not like to think that when
she was dead people might call her heartless and say she had thrown me
over; and no one would ever know the truth except me, unless I chose
to tell--me and her father.'

'Then you were not to be married after all!' Margaret showed her
surprise.

'No. I had broken it off. We were going to let it be known the next
day.'

'On the very eve of the wedding!'

'Yes.' Mr. Van Torp fixed his eyes on Margaret's again. 'On the very
eve of the wedding,' he said, repeating her words.

He spoke very slowly and without emphasis, but with the greatest
possible distinctness. Margaret had once been taken to see a motor-car
manufactory and she remembered a machine that clipped bits off the
end of an iron bar, inch by inch, smoothly and deliberately. Mr. Van
Torp's lips made her think of that; they seemed to cut the hard words
one by one, in lengths.

'Poor girl!' she sighed, and looked away.

The man's face did not change, and if his next words echoed the
sympathy she expressed his tone did not.

'I was a good deal cut up myself,' he observed coolly. 'Here's your
book, Madame Cordova.'

'No,' Margaret answered with a little burst of indignation, 'I don't
want it. I won't take it from you!'

'What's the matter now?' asked Mr. Van Torp without the least change
of manner. 'It's your friend Mr. Lushington's latest, you know, and it
won't be out for ten days. I thought you would like to see it, so I
got an advance copy before it was published.'

He held the volume out to her, but she would not even look at it, nor
answer him.

'How you hate me! Don't you, Madame Cordova?'

Margaret still said nothing. She was considering how she could best
get rid of him. If she simply brushed past him and went back to her
chair on the lee side, he would follow her and go on talking to her as
if nothing had happened; and she knew that in that case she would lose
control of herself before Griggs and Miss More.

'Oh, well,' he went on, 'if you don't want the book, I don't. I can't
read novels myself, and I daresay it's trash anyhow.'

Thereupon, with a quick movement of his arm and hand, he sent Mr.
Lushington's latest novel flying over the lee rail, fully thirty feet
away, and it dropped out of sight into the grey waves. He had been a
good baseball pitcher in his youth.

Margaret bit her lip and her eyes flashed.

'You are quite the most disgustingly brutal person I ever met,' she
said, no longer able to keep down her anger.

'No,' he answered calmly. 'I'm not brutal; I'm only logical. I took a
great deal of trouble to get that book for you because I thought
it would give you pleasure, and it wasn't a particularly legal
transaction by which I got it either. Since you didn't want it, I
wasn't going to let anybody else have the satisfaction of reading it
before it was published, so I just threw it away because it is safer
in the sea than knocking about in my cabin. If you hadn't seen me
throw it overboard you would never have believed that I had. You're
not much given to believing me, anyway. I've noticed that. Are you,
now?'

'Oh, it was not the book!'

Margaret turned from him and made a step forward so that she faced the
sharp wind. It cut her face and she felt that the little pain was
a relief. He came and stood beside her with his hands deep in the
pockets of his overcoat.

'If you think I'm a brute on account of what I told you about
Miss Bamberger,' he said, 'that's not quite fair. I broke off our
engagement because I found out that we were going to make each other
miserable and we should have had to divorce in six months; and if half
the people who are just going to get married would do the same thing
there would be a lot more happy women in the world, not to say men!
That's all, and she knew it, poor girl, and was just as glad as I was
when the thing was done. Now what is there so brutal in that, Madame
Cordova?'

Margaret turned on him almost fiercely.

'Why do you tell me all this?' she asked. 'For heaven's sake let poor
Miss Bamberger rest in her grave!'

'Since you ask me why,' answered Mr. Van Torp, unmoved, 'I tell you
all this because I want you to know more about me than you do. If you
did, you'd hate me less. That's the plain truth. You know very well
that there's nobody like you, and that if I'd judged I had the
slightest chance of getting you I would no more have thought of
marrying Miss Bamberger than of throwing a million dollars into the
sea after that book, or ten million, and that's a great deal of
money.'

'I ought to be flattered,' said Margaret with scorn, still facing the
wind.

'No. I'm not given to flattery, and money means something real to me,
because I've fought for it, and got it. Your regular young lover will
always call you his precious treasure, and I don't see much difference
between a precious treasure and several million dollars. I'm logical,
you see. I tell you I'm logical, that's all.'

'I daresay. I think we have been talking here long enough. Shall we go
back?'

She had got her anger under again. She detested Mr. Van Torp, but she
was honest enough to realise that for the present she had resented his
saying that Lushington's book was probably trash, much more than what
he had told her of his broken engagement. She turned and came back to
the ventilator, meaning to go around to her chair, but he stopped her.

'Don't go yet, please!' he said, keeping beside her. 'Call me a
disgusting brute if you like. I sha'n't mind it, and I daresay it's
true in a kind of way. Business isn't very refining, you know, and it
was the only education I got after I was sixteen. I'm sorry I called
that book rubbish, for I'm sure it's not. I've met Mr. Lushington in
England several times; he's very clever, and he's got a first-rate
position. But you see I didn't like your refusing the book, after I'd
taken so much trouble to get it for you. Perhaps if I hadn't thrown it
overboard you'd take it, now that I've apologised. Would you?'

His tone had changed at last, as she had known it to change before in
the course of an acquaintance that had lasted more than a year. He put
the question almost humbly.

'I don't know,' Margaret answered, relenting a little in spite of
herself. 'At all events I'm sorry I was so rude. I lost my temper.'

'It was very natural,' said Mr. Van Torp meekly, but not looking at
her, 'and I know I deserved it. You really would let me give you the
book now, if it were possible, wouldn't you?'

'Perhaps.' She thought that as there was no such possibility it was
safe to say as much as that.

'I should feel so much better if you would,' he answered. 'I should
feel as if you'd accepted my apology. Won't you say it, Madame
Cordova?'

'Well--yes--since you wish it so much,' Margaret replied, feeling that
she risked nothing.

'Here it is, then,' he said, to her amazement, producing the new novel
from the pocket of his overcoat, and enjoying her surprise as he put
it into her hand.

It looked like a trick of sleight of hand, and she took the book and
stared at him, as a child stares at the conjuror who produces an apple
out of its ear.

'But I saw you throw it away,' she said in a puzzled tone.

'I got two while I was about it,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling without
showing his teeth. 'It was just as easy and it didn't cost me any
more.'

'I see! Thank you very much.'

She knew that she could not but keep the volume now, and in her heart
she was glad to have it, for Lushington had written to her about it
several times since she had been in America.

'Well, I'll leave you now,' said the millionaire, resuming his stony
expression. 'I hope I've not kept you too long.'

Before Margaret had realised the idiotic conventionality of the last
words her companion had disappeared and she was left alone. He had not
gone back in the direction whence they had come, but had taken the
deserted windward side of the ship, doubtless with the intention of
avoiding the crowd.

Margaret stood still for some time in the lee of the ventilator,
holding the novel in her hand and thinking. She wondered whether Mr.
Van Torp had planned the whole scene, including the sacrifice of the
novel. If he had not, it was certainly strange that he should have had
the second copy ready in his pocket. Lushington had once told her that
great politicians and great financiers were always great comedians,
and now that she remembered the saying it occurred to her that Mr. Van
Torp reminded her of a certain type of American actor, a type that
has a heavy jaw and an aggressive eye, and strongly resembles the
portraits of Daniel Webster. Now Daniel Webster had a wide reputation
as a politician, but there is reason to believe that the numerous
persons who lent him money and never got it back thought him a
financier of undoubted ability, if not a comedian of talent. There
were giants in those days.

The English girl, breathing the clean air of the ocean, felt as if
something had left a bad taste in her mouth; and the famous young
singer, who had seen in two years what a normal Englishwoman would
neither see, nor guess at, nor wish to imagine in a lifetime, thought
she understood tolerably well what the bad taste meant. Moreover,
Margaret Donne was ashamed of what Margarita da Cordova knew, and
Cordova had moments of sharp regret when she thought of the girl who
had been herself, and had lived under good Mrs. Rushmore's protection,
like a flower in a glass house.

She remembered, too, how Lushington and Mrs. Rushmore had warned her
and entreated her not to become an opera-singer. She had taken her
future into her own hands and had soon found out what it meant to be
a celebrity on the stage; and she had seen only too clearly where
she was classed by the women who would have been her companions and
friends if she had kept out of the profession. She had learned by
experience, too, how little real consideration she could expect from
men of the world, and how very little she could really exact from such
people as Mr. Van Torp; still less could she expect to get it from
persons like Schreiermeyer, who looked upon the gifted men and women
he engaged to sing as so many head of cattle, to be driven more or
less hard according to their value, and to be turned out to starve the
moment they were broken-winded. That fate is sure to overtake the best
of them sooner or later. The career of a great opera-singer is rarely
more than half as long as that of a great tragedian, and even when a
primadonna or a tenor makes a fortune, the decline of their glory is
far more sudden and sad than that of actors generally is. Lady Macbeth
is as great a part as Juliet for an actress of genius, but there are
no 'old parts' for singers; the soprano dare not turn into a contralto
with advancing years, nor does the unapproachable Parsifal of
eight-and-twenty turn into an incomparable Amfortas at fifty. For the
actor, it often happens that the first sign of age is fatigue; in the
singer's day, the first shadow is an eclipse, the first false note is
disaster, the first breakdown is often a heart-rending failure that
brings real tears to the eyes of younger comrades. The exquisite voice
does not grow weak and pathetic and ethereal by degrees, so that we
still love to hear it, even to the end; far more often it is suddenly
flat or sharp by a quarter of a tone throughout whole acts, or it
breaks on one note in a discordant shriek that is the end. Down goes
the curtain then, in the middle of the great opera, and down goes the
great singer for ever into tears and silence. Some of us have seen
that happen, many have heard of it; few can think without real
sympathy of such mortal suffering and distress.

Margaret realised all this, without any illusion, but there was
another side to the question. There was success, glorious and
far-reaching, and beyond her brightest dreams; there was the certainty
that she was amongst the very first, for the deafening ring of
universal applause was in her ears; and, above all, there was youth.
Sometimes it seemed to her that she had almost too much, and that some
dreadful thing must happen to her; yet if there were moments when she
faintly regretted the calmer, sweeter life she might have led, she
knew that she would have given that life up, over and over again, for
the splendid joy of holding thousands spellbound while she sang. She
had the real lyric artist's temperament, for that breathless silence
of the many while her voice rang out alone, and trilled and died away
to a delicate musical echo, was more to her than the roar of applause
that could be heard through the walls and closed doors in the street
outside. To such a moment as that Faustus himself would have cried
'Stay!' though the price of satisfied desire were his soul. And there
had been many such moments in Cordova's life. They satisfied something
much deeper than greedy vanity and stronger than hungry ambition. Call
it what you will, according to the worth you set on such art, it is
a longing which only artists feel, and to which only something in
themselves can answer. To listen to perfect music is a feast for gods,
but to be the living instrument beyond compare is to be a god oneself.
Of our five senses, sight calls up visions, divine as well as earthly,
but hearing alone can link body, mind, and soul with higher things, by
the word and by the word made song. The mere memory of hearing when it
is lost is still enough for the ends of genius; for the poet and the
composer touch the blind most deeply, perhaps, when other senses do
not count at all; but a painter who loses his sight is as helpless in
the world of art as a dismasted ship in the middle of the ocean.

Some of these thoughts passed through Margaret's brain as she stood
beside the ventilator with her friend's new book in her hand, and,
although her reflections were not new to her, it was the first time
she clearly understood that her life had made two natures out of her
original self, and that the two did not always agree. She felt that
she was not halved by the process, but doubled. She was two women
instead of one, and each woman was complete in herself. She had not
found this out by any elaborate self-study, for healthy people do not
study themselves. She simply felt it, and she was sure it was true,
because she knew that each of her two selves was able to do, suffer,
and enjoy as much as any one woman could. The one might like what the
other disliked and feared, but the contradiction was open and natural,
not secret or morbid. The two women were called respectively Madame
Cordova and Miss Donne. Miss Donne thought Madame Cordova very showy,
and much too tolerant of vulgar things and people, if not a little
touched with vulgarity herself. On the other hand, the brilliantly
successful Cordova thought Margaret Donne a good girl, but rather
silly. Miss Donne was very fond of Edmund Lushington, the writer, but
the Primadonna had a distinct weakness for Constantine Logotheti, the
Greek financier who lived in Paris, and who wore too many rubies and
diamonds.

On two points, at least, the singer and the modest English girl
agreed, for they both detested Rufus Van Torp, and each had positive
proof that he was in love with her, if what he felt deserved the name.

For in very different ways she was really loved by Lushington and by
Logotheti; and since she had been famous she had made the acquaintance
of a good many very high and imposing personages, whose names are to
be found in the first and second part of the _Almanack de Gotha_, in
the Olympian circle of the reigning or the supernal regions of the
Serene Mediatized, far above the common herd of dukes and princes;
they had offered her a share in the overflowing abundance of their
admirative protection; and then had seemed surprised, if not deeply
moved, by the independence she showed in declining their intimacy.
Some of them were frankly and contentedly cynical; some were of a
brutality compared with which the tastes and manners of a bargee would
have seemed ladylike; some were as refined and sensitive as English
old maids, though less scrupulous and much less shy; the one was
as generous as an Irish sailor, the next was as mean as a Normandy
peasant; some had offered her rivers of rubies, and some had proposed
to take her incognito for a drive in a cab, because it would be so
amusing--and so inexpensive. Yet in their families and varieties
they were all of the same species, all human and all subject to the
ordinary laws of attraction and repulsion. Rufus Van Torp was not like
them.

Neither of Margaret's selves could look upon him as a normal human
being. At first sight there was nothing so very unusual in his face,
certainly nothing that suggested a monster; and yet, whatever mood she
chanced to be in, she could not be with him five minutes without being
aware of something undefinable that always disturbed her profoundly,
and sometimes became positively terrifying. She always felt the
sensation coming upon her after a few moments, and when it had
actually come she could hardly hide her repulsion till she felt, as
to-day, that she must run from him, without the least consideration
of pride or dignity. She might have fled like that before a fire or a
flood, or from the scene of an earthquake, and more than once nothing
had kept her in her place but her strong will and healthy nerves. She
knew that it was like the panic that seizes people in the presence of
an appalling disturbance of nature.

Doubtless, when she had talked with Mr. Van Torp just now, she had
been disgusted by the indifferent way in which he spoke of poor Miss
Bamberger's sudden death; it was still more certain that what he said
about the book, and his very ungentlemanly behaviour in throwing it
into the sea, had roused her justifiable anger. But she would have
smiled at the thought that an exhibition of heartlessness, or the most
utter lack of manners, could have made her wish to run away from any
other man. Her life had accustomed her to people who had no more
feeling than Schreiermeyer, and no better manners than Pompeo
Stromboli. Van Torp might have been on his very best behaviour that
morning, or at any of her previous chance meetings with him; sooner
or later she would have felt that same absurd and unreasoning fear
of him, and would have found it very hard not to turn and make her
escape. His face was so stony and his eyes were so aggressive; he was
always like something dreadful that was just going to happen.

Yet Margarita da Cordova was a brave woman, and had lately been called
a heroine because she had gone on singing after that explosion till
the people were quiet again; and Margaret Donne was a sensible girl,
justly confident of being able to take care of herself where men were
concerned. She stood still and wondered what there was about Mr. Van
Torp that could frighten her so dreadfully.

After a little while she went quietly back to her chair, and sat down
between Griggs and Miss More. The elderly man rose and packed her
neatly in her plaid, and she thanked him. Miss More looked at her and
smiled vaguely, as even the most intelligent people do sometimes. Then
Griggs got into his own chair again and took up his book.

'Was that right of me?' he asked presently, so low that Miss More did
not hear him speak.

'Yes,' Margaret answered, under her breath, 'but don't let me do it
again, please.'

They both began to read, but after a time Margaret spoke to him again
without turning her eyes.

'He wanted to ask me about that girl who died at the theatre,' she
said, just audibly.

'Oh--yes!'

Griggs seemed so vague that Margaret glanced at him. He was looking at
the inside of his right hand in a meditative way, as if it recalled
something. If he had shown more interest in what she said she would
have told him what she had just learned, about the breaking off of the
engagement, but he was evidently absorbed in thought, while he slowly
rubbed that particular spot on his hand, and looked at it again and
again as if it recalled something.

Margaret did not resent his indifference, for he was much more than
old enough to be her father; he was a man whom all younger writers
looked upon as a veteran, he had always been most kind and courteous
to her when she had met him, and she freely conceded him the right to
be occupied with his own thoughts and not with hers. With him she was
always Margaret Donne, and he seldom talked to her about music, or of
her own work. Indeed, he so rarely mentioned music that she fancied he
did not really care for it, and she wondered why he was so often in
the house when she sang.

Mr. Van Torp did not show himself at luncheon, and Margaret began to
hope that he would not appear on deck again till the next day. In
the afternoon the wind dropped, the clouds broke, and the sun shone
brightly. Little Ida, who was tired of doing crochet work, and had
looked at all the books that had pictures, came and begged Margaret to
walk round the ship with her. It would please her small child's vanity
to show everybody that the great singer was willing to be seen walking
up and down with her, although she was quite deaf, and could not hope
ever to hear music. It was her greatest delight to be treated before
every one as if she were just like other girls, and her cleverness in
watching the lips of the person with her, without seeming too intent,
was wonderful.

They went the whole length of the promenade deck, as if they were
reviewing the passengers, bundled and packed in their chairs, and the
passengers looked at them both with so much interest that the child
made Margaret come all the way back again.

'The sea has a voice, too, hasn't it?' Ida asked, as they paused and
looked over the rail.

She glanced up quickly for the answer, but Margaret did not find one
at once.

'Because I've read poetry about the voices of the sea,' Ida explained.
'And in books they talk of the music of the waves, and then they say
the sea roars, and thunders in a storm. I can hear thunder, you know.
Did you know that I could hear thunder?'

Margaret smiled and looked interested.

'It bangs in the back of my head,' said the child gravely. 'But I
should like to hear the sea thunder. I often watch the waves on the
beach, as if they were lips moving, and I try to understand what they
say. Of course, it's play, because one can't, can one? But I can only
make out "Boom, ta-ta-ta-ta," getting quicker and weaker to the end,
you know, as the ripples run up the sand.'

'It's very like what I hear,' Margaret answered.

'Is it really?' Little Ida was delighted. 'Perhaps it's a language
after all, and I shall make it out some day. You see, until I know the
language people are speaking, their lips look as if they were talking
nonsense. But I'm sure the sea could not really talk nonsense all day
for thousands of years.'

'No, I'm sure it couldn't!' Margaret was amused. 'But the sea is not
alive,' she added.

'Everything that moves is alive,' the child said, 'and everything that
is alive can make a noise, and the noise must mean something. If it
didn't, it would be of no use, and everything is of some use. So
there!'

Delighted with her own argument, the beautiful child laughed and
showed her even teeth in the sun.

They were standing at the end of the promenade deck, which extended
twenty feet abaft the smoking-room, and took the whole beam; above
the latter, as in most modern ships, there was the boat deck, to the
after-part of which passengers had access. Standing below, it was easy
to see and talk with any one who looked over the upper rail.

Ida threw her head back and looked up as she laughed, and Margaret
laughed good-naturedly with her, thinking how pretty she was. But
suddenly the child's expression changed, her face grew grave, and her
eyes fixed themselves intently on some point above. Margaret looked in
the same direction, and saw that Mr. Van Torp was standing alone up
there, leaning against the railing and evidently not seeing her, for
he gazed fixedly into the distance; and as he stood there, his lips
moved as if he were talking to himself.

Margaret gave a little start of surprise when she saw him, but the
child watched him steadily, and a look of fear stole over her face.
Suddenly she grasped Margaret's arm.

'Come away! Come away!' she cried in a low tone of terror.




CHAPTER IV


Margaret was sorry to say good-bye to Miss More and little Ida when
the voyage was over, three days later. She was instinctively fond of
children, as all healthy women are, and she saw very few of them in
her wandering life. It is true that she did not understand them very
well, for she had been an only child, brought up much alone, and
children's ways are only to be learnt and understood by experience,
since all children are experimentalists in life, and what often seems
to us foolishness in them is practical wisdom of the explorative kind.

When Ida had pulled Margaret away from the railing after watching Mr.
Van Torp while he was talking to himself, the singer had thought
very little of it; and Ida never mentioned it afterwards. As for the
millionaire, he was hardly seen again, and he made no attempt to
persuade Margaret to take another walk with him on deck.

'Perhaps you would like to see my place,' he said, as he bade her
good-bye on the tender at Liverpool. 'It used to be called Oxley
Paddox, but I didn't like that, so I changed the name to Torp Towers.
I'm Mr. Van Torp of Torp Towers. Sounds well, don't it?'

'Yes,' Margaret answered, biting her lip, for she wanted to laugh. 'It
has a very lordly sound. If you bought a moor and a river in Scotland,
you might call yourself the M'Torp of Glen Torp, in the same way.'

'I see you're laughing at me,' said the millionaire, with a quiet
smile of a man either above or beyond ridicule. 'But it's all a game
in a toy-shop anyway, this having a place in Europe. I buy a doll to
play with when I have time, and I can call it what I please, and
smash its head when I'm tired of it. It's my doll. It isn't any one's
else's. The Towers is in Derbyshire if you want to come.'

Margaret did not 'want to come' to Torp Towers, even if the doll
wasn't 'any one's else's.' She was sorry for any person or thing
that had the misfortune to be Mr. Van Torp's doll, and she felt her
inexplicable fear of him coming upon her while he was speaking. She
broke off the conversation by saying good-bye rather abruptly.

'Then you won't come,' he said, in a tone of amusement.

'Really, you are very kind, but I have so many engagements.'

'Saturday to Monday in the season wouldn't interfere with your
engagements. However, do as you like.'

'Thank you very much. Good-bye again.'

She escaped, and he looked after her, with an unsatisfied expression
that was almost wistful, and that would certainly not have been in his
face if she could have seen it.

Griggs was beside her when she went ashore.

'I had not much to do after all,' he said, glancing at Van Torp.

'No,' Margaret answered, 'but please don't think it was all
imagination. I may tell you some day. No,' she said again, after a
short pause, 'he did not make himself a nuisance, except that once,
and now he has asked me to his place in Derbyshire.'

'Torp Towers,' Griggs observed, with a smile.

'Yes. I could hardly help laughing when he told me he had changed its
name.'

'It's worth seeing,' said Griggs. 'A big old house, all full of other
people's ghosts.'

'Ghosts?'

'I mean figuratively. It's full of things that remind one of the
people who lived there. It has one of the oldest parks in England.
Lots of pheasants, too--but that cannot last long.'

'Why not?'

'He won't let any one shoot them! They will all die of overcrowding in
two or three years. His keepers are three men from the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.'

'What a mad idea!' Margaret laughed. 'Is he a Buddhist?'

'No.' Paul Griggs knew something about Buddhism. 'Certainly not! He's
eccentric. That's all.'

They were at the pier. Half-an-hour later they were in the train
together, and there was no one else in the carriage. Miss More and
little Ida had disappeared directly after landing, but Margaret had
seen Mr. Van Torp get into a carriage on the window of which was
pasted the label of the rich and great: 'Reserved.' She could have had
the same privilege if she had chosen to ask for it or pay for it, but
it irritated her that he should treat himself like a superior being.
Everything he did either irritated her or frightened her, and she
found herself constantly thinking of him and wishing that he would get
out at the first station. Griggs was silent too, and Margaret thought
he really might have taken some trouble to amuse her.

She had Lushington's book on her knee, for she had found it less
interesting than she had expected, and was rather ashamed of not
having finished it before meeting him, since it had been given to her.
She thought he might come down as far as Rugby to meet her, and she
was quite willing that he should find her with it in her hand. A
literary man is always supposed to be flattered at finding a friend
reading his last production, as if he did not know that the friend has
probably grabbed the volume with undignified haste the instant he was
on the horizon, with the intention of being discovered deep in it. Yet
such little friendly frauds are sweet compared with the extremes of
brutal frankness to which our dearest friends sometimes think it their
duty to go with us, for our own good.

After a time Griggs spoke to her, and she was glad to hear his voice.
She had grown to like him during the voyage, even more than she had
ever thought probable. She had even gone so far as to wonder whether,
if he had been twenty-five years younger, he might not have been the
one man she had ever met whom she might care to marry, and she had
laughed at the involved terms of the hypothesis as soon as she thought
of it. Griggs had never been married, but elderly people remembered
that there had been some romantic tale about his youth, when he had
been an unknown young writer struggling for life as a newspaper
correspondent.

'You saw the notice of Miss Bamberger's death, I suppose,' he said,
turning his grey eyes to hers.

He had not alluded to the subject during the voyage.

'Yes,' Margaret answered, wondering why he broached it now.

'The notice said that she died of heart failure, from shock,' Griggs
continued. 'I should like to know what you think about it, as you were
with her when she died. Have you any idea that she may have died of
anything else?'

'No.' Margaret was surprised. 'The doctor said it was that.'

'I know. I only wanted to have your own impression. I believe that
when people die of heart failure in that way, they often make
desperate efforts to explain what has happened, and go on trying to
talk when they can only make inarticulate sounds. Do you remember if
it was at all like that?'

'Not at all,' Margaret said. 'She whispered the last words she spoke,
but they were quite distinct. Then she drew three or four deep
breaths, and all at once I saw that she was dead, and I called the
doctor from the next room.'

'I suppose that might be heart failure,' said Griggs thoughtfully.
'You are quite sure that you thought it was only that, are you not?'

'Only what?' Margaret asked with growing surprise.

'Only fright, or the result of having been half-suffocated in the
crowd.'

'Yes, I think I am sure. What do you mean? Why do you insist so much?'

'It's of no use to tell other people,' said Griggs, 'but you may just
as well know. I found her lying in a heap behind a door, where there
could not have been much of a crowd.'

'Perhaps she had taken refuge there, to save herself,' Margaret
suggested.

'Possibly. But there was another thing. When I got home I found that
there was a little blood on the palm of my hand. It was the hand I had
put under her waist when I lifted her.'

'Do you mean to say you think she was wounded?' Margaret asked,
opening her eyes wide.

'There was blood on the inside of my hand,' Griggs answered, 'and I
had no scratch to account for it. I know quite well that it was on the
hand that I put under her waist--a little above the waist, just in the
middle of her back.'

'But it would have been seen afterwards.'

'On the dark red silk she wore? Not if there was very little of it.
The doctor never thought of looking for such a wound. Why should he?
He had not the slightest reason for suspecting that the poor girl had
been murdered.'

'Murdered?'

Margaret looked hard at Griggs, and then she suddenly shuddered from
head to foot. She had never before had such a sensation; it was like
a shock from an electric current at the instant when the contact is
made, not strong enough to hurt, but yet very disagreeable. She felt
it at the moment when her mind connected what Griggs was saying with
the dying girl's last words, 'he did it'; and with little Ida's look
of horror when she had watched Mr. Van Torp's lips while he was
talking to himself on the boat-deck of the _Leofric_; and again, with
the physical fear of the man that always came over her when she had
been near him for a little while. When she spoke to Griggs again the
tone of her voice had changed.

'Please tell me how it could have been done,' she said.

'Easily enough. A steel bodkin six or seven inches long, or even a
strong hat-pin. It would be only a question of strength.'

Margaret remembered Mr. Van Torp's coarse hands, and shuddered again.

'How awful!' she exclaimed.

'One would bleed to death internally before long,' Griggs said.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. That is the reason why the three-cornered blade for duelling
swords was introduced in France thirty years ago. Before that, men
often fought with ordinary foils filed to a point, and there were many
deaths from internal hemorrhage.'

'What odd things you always know! That would be just like being run
through with a bodkin, then?'

'Very much the same.'

'But it would have been found out afterwards,' Margaret said, 'and the
papers would have been full of it.'

'That does not follow,' Griggs answered. 'The girl was an only child,
and her mother had been divorced and married again. She lived alone
with her father, and he probably was told the truth. But Isidore
Bamberger is not the man to spread out his troubles before the public
in the newspapers. On the contrary, if he found out that his daughter
had been killed--supposing that she was--he probably made up his mind
at once that the world should not know it till he had caught the
murderer. So he sent for the best detective in America, put the matter
in his hands, and inserted a notice of his daughter's death that
agreed with what the doctor had said. That would be the detective's
advice, I'm sure, and probably Van Torp approved of it.'

'Mr. Van Torp? Do you think he was told about it? Why?'

'First, because Bamberger is Van Torp's banker, broker, figure-head,
and general representative on earth,' answered Griggs. 'Secondly,
because Van Torp was engaged to marry the girl.'

'The engagement was broken off,' Margaret said.

'How do you know that?' asked Griggs quickly.

'Mr. Van Torp told me, on the steamer. They had broken it off that
very day, and were going to let it be known the next morning. He told
me so, that afternoon when I walked with him.'

'Really!'

Griggs was a little surprised, but as he did not connect Van Torp with
the possibility that Miss Bamberger had been murdered, his thoughts
did not dwell on the broken engagement.

'Why don't you try to find out the truth?' Margaret asked rather
anxiously. 'You know so many people everywhere--you have so much
experience.'

'I never had much taste for detective work,' answered the literary
man, 'and besides, this is none of my business. But Bamberger and Van
Torp are probably both of them aware by this time that I found the
girl and carried her to the manager's room, and when they are ready
to ask me what I know, or what I remember, the detective they
are employing will suddenly appear to me in the shape of a new
acquaintance in some out-of-the-way place, who will go to work
scientifically to make me talk to him. He will very likely have a
little theory of his own, to the effect that since it was I who
brought Miss Bamberger to Schreiermeyer's room, it was probably I who
killed her, for some mysterious reason!'

'Shall you tell him about the drop of blood on your hand?'

'Without the slightest hesitation. But not until I am asked, and I
shall be very glad if you will not speak of it.'

'I won't,' Margaret said; 'but I wonder why you have told me if you
mean to keep it a secret!'

The veteran man of letters turned his sad grey eyes to hers, while his
lips smiled.

'The world is not all bad,' he said. 'All men are not liars, and all
women do not betray confidence.'

'It's very good to hear a man like you say that,' Margaret answered.
'It means something.'

'Yes,' assented Griggs thoughtfully. 'It means a great deal to me to
be sure of it, now that most of my life is lived.'

'Were you unhappy when you were young?'

She asked the question as a woman sometimes does who feels herself
strongly drawn to a man much older than she. Griggs did not answer at
once, and when he spoke his voice was unusually grave, and his eyes
looked far away.

'A great misfortune happened to me,' he said. 'A great misfortune,' he
repeated slowly, after a pause, and his tone and look told Margaret
how great that calamity had been better than a score of big words.

'Forgive me,' Margaret said softly; 'I should have known.'

'No,' Griggs answered after a moment. 'You could not have known. It
happened very long ago, perhaps ten years before you were born.'

Again he turned his sad grey eyes to hers, but no smile lingered now
about the rather stern mouth. The two looked at each other quietly
for five or six seconds, and that may seem a long time. When Margaret
turned away from the elderly man's more enduring gaze, both felt that
there was a bond of sympathy between them which neither had quite
acknowledged till then. There was silence after that, and Margaret
looked out of the window, while her hand unconsciously played with the
book on her knee, lifting the cover a little and letting it fall again
and again.

Suddenly she turned to Griggs once more and held the book out to him
with a smile.

'I'm not an autograph-hunter,' she said, 'but will you write something
on the fly-leaf? Just a word or two, without your name, if you like.
Do you think I'm very sentimental?'

She smiled again, and he took the book from her and produced a pencil.

'It's a book I shall not throw away,' she went on, 'because the man
who wrote it is a great friend of mine, and I have everything he has
ever written. So, as I shall keep it, I want it to remind me that you
and I grew to know each other better on this voyage.'

It occurred to the veteran that while this was complimentary to
himself it was not altogether promising for Lushington, who was the
old friend in question. A woman who loves a man does not usually ask
another to write a line in that man's book. Griggs set the point of
the pencil on the fly-leaf as if he were going to write; but then he
hesitated, looked up, glanced at Margaret, and at last leaned back in
the seat, as if in deep thought.

'I didn't mean to give you so much trouble,' Margaret said, still
smiling. 'I thought it must be so easy for a famous author like you to
write half-a-dozen words!'

'A "sentiment" you mean!' Griggs laughed rather contemptuously, and
then was grave again.

'No!' Margaret said, a little disappointed. 'You did not understand
me. Don't write anything at all. Give me back the book.'

She held out her hand for it; but as if he had just made up his mind,
he put his pencil to the paper again, and wrote four words in a small
clear hand. She leaned forwards a little to see what he was writing.

'You know enough Latin to read that,' he said, as he gave the book
back to her.

She read the words aloud, with a puzzled expression.

'"Credo in resurrectionem mortuorum."' She looked at him for some
explanation.

'Yes,' he said, answering her unspoken question. '"I believe in the
resurrection of the dead."'

'It means something especial to you--is that it?'

'Yes.' His eyes were very sad again as they met hers.

'My voice?' she asked. 'Some one--who sang like me? Who died?'

'Long before you were born,' he answered gently.

There was another little pause before she spoke again, for she was
touched.

'Thank you,' she said. 'Thank you for writing that.'




CHAPTER V


Mr. Van Torp arrived in London alone, with one small valise, for he
had sent his man with his luggage to the place in Derbyshire. At
Euston a porter got him a hansom, and he bargained with the cabman to
take him and his valise to the Temple for eighteenpence, a sum which,
he explained, allowed sixpence for the valise, as the distance could
not by any means be made out to be more than two miles.

Such close economy was to be expected from a millionaire, travelling
incognito; what was more surprising was that, when the cab stopped
before a door in Hare Court and Mr. Van Torp received his valise from
the roof of the vehicle, he gave the man half-a-crown, and said it was
'all right.'

'Now, my man,' he observed, 'you've not only got an extra shilling,
to which you had no claim whatever, but you've had the pleasure of a
surprise which you could not have bought for that money.'

The cabman grinned as he touched his hat and drove away, and Mr. Van
Torp took his valise in one hand and his umbrella in the other and
went up the dark stairs. He went up four flights without stopping
to take breath, and without so much as glancing at any of the names
painted in white letters on the small black boards beside the doors on
the right and left of each landing.

The fourth floor was the last, and though the name on the left had
evidently been there a number of years, for the white lettering was of
the tint of a yellow fog, it was still quite clear and legible.

MR.I. BAMBERGER.

That was the name, but the millionaire did not look at it any more
than he had looked at the others lower down. He knew them all by
heart. He dropped his valise, took a small key from his pocket, opened
the door, picked up his valise again, and, as neither hand was free,
he shut the door with his heel as he passed in, and it slammed behind
him, sending dismal echoes down the empty staircase.

The entry was almost quite dark, for it was past six o'clock in the
afternoon, late in March, and the sky was overcast; but there was
still light enough to see in the large room on the left into which Mr.
Van Torp carried his things.

It was a dingy place, poorly furnished, but some one had dusted the
table, the mantelpiece, and the small bookcase, and the fire was laid
in the grate, while a bright copper kettle stood on a movable hob. Mr.
Van Torp struck a match and lighted the kindling before he took off
his overcoat, and in a few minutes a cheerful blaze dispelled the
gathering gloom. He went to a small old-fashioned cupboard in a corner
and brought from it a chipped cup and saucer, a brown teapot, and a
cheap japanned tea-caddy, all of which he set on the table; and as
soon as the fire burned brightly, he pushed the movable hob round with
his foot till the kettle was over the flame of the coals. Then he took
off his overcoat and sat down in the shabby easy-chair by the hearth,
to wait till the water boiled.

His proceedings, his manner, and his expression would have surprised
the people who had been his fellow-passengers on the _Leofric_, and
who imagined Mr. Van Torp driving to an Olympian mansion, somewhere
between Constitution Hill and Sloane Square, to be received at his own
door by gravely obsequious footmen in plush, and to drink Imperial
Chinese tea from cups of Old Saxe, or Bleu du Roi, or Capo di Monte.

Paul Griggs, having tea and a pipe in a quiet little hotel in Clarges
Street, would have been much surprised if he could have seen Rufus Van
Torp lighting a fire for himself in that dingy room in Hare Court.
Madame Margarita da Cordova, waiting for an expected visitor in her
own sitting-room, in her own pretty house in Norfolk Crescent, would
have been very much surprised indeed. The sight would have plunged her
into even greater uncertainty as to the man's real character, and it
is not unlikely that she would have taken his mysterious retreat to be
another link in the chain of evidence against him which already seemed
so convincing. She might naturally have wondered, too, what he had
felt when he had seen that board beside the door, and she could hardly
have believed that he had gone in without so much as glancing at the
yellowish letters that formed the name of Bamberger.

But he seemed quite at home where he was, and not at all uncomfortable
as he sat before the fire, watching the spout of the kettle, his
elbows on the arms of the easy-chair and his hands raised before him,
with the finger-tips pressed against each other, in the attitude
which, with most men, means that they are considering the two sides of
a question that is interesting without being very important.

Perhaps a thoughtful observer would have noticed at once that there
had been no letters waiting for him when he had arrived, and would
have inferred either that he did not mean to stay at the rooms
twenty-four hours, or that, if he did, he had not chosen to let any
one know where he was.

Presently it occurred to him that there was no longer any light in
the room except from the fire, and he rose and lit the gas. The
incandescent light sent a raw glare into the farthest corners of the
large room, and just then a tiny wreath of white steam issued from the
spout of the kettle. This did not escape Mr. Van Torp's watchful eye,
but instead of making tea at once he looked at his watch, after which
he crossed the room to the window and stood thoughtfully gazing
through the panes at the fast disappearing outlines of the roofs and
chimney-pots which made up the view when there was daylight outside.
He did not pull down the shade before he turned back to the fire,
perhaps because no one could possibly look in.

But he poured a little hot water into the teapot, to scald it, and
went to the cupboard and got another cup and saucer, and an old
tobacco-tin of which the dingy label was half torn off, and which
betrayed by a rattling noise that it contained lumps of sugar. The
imaginary thoughtful observer already mentioned would have inferred
from all this that Mr. Van Torp had resolved to put off making tea
until some one came to share it with him, and that the some one
might take sugar, though he himself did not; and further, as it was
extremely improbable, on the face of it, that an afternoon visitor
should look in by a mere chance, in the hope of finding some one in
Mr. Isidore Bamberger's usually deserted rooms, on the fourth floor of
a dark building in Hare Court, the observer would suppose that Mr. Van
Torp was expecting some one to come and see him just at that hour,
though he had only landed in Liverpool that day, and would have been
still at sea if the weather had been rough or foggy.

All this might have still further interested Paul Griggs, and would
certainly have seemed suspicious to Margaret, if she could have known
about it.

Five minutes passed, and ten, and the kettle was boiling furiously,
and sending out a long jet of steam over the not very shapely toes of
Mr. Van Torp's boots, as he leaned back with his feet on the fender.
He looked at his watch again and apparently gave up the idea of
waiting any longer, for he rose and poured out the hot water from the
teapot into one of the cups, as a preparatory measure, and took off
the lid to put in the tea. But just as he had opened the caddy, he
paused and listened. The door of the room leading to the entry was
ajar, and as he stood by the table he had heard footsteps on the
stairs, still far down, but mounting steadily.

He went to the outer door and listened. There was no doubt that
somebody was coming up; any one not deaf could have heard the sound.
It was more strange that Mr. Van Torp should recognise the step,
for the rooms on the other side of the landing were occupied, and a
stranger would have thought it quite possible that the person who
was coming up should be going there. But Mr. Van Torp evidently knew
better, for he opened his door noiselessly and stood waiting to
receive the visitor. The staircase below was dimly lighted by gas, but
there was none at the upper landing, and in a few seconds a dark form
appeared, casting a tall shadow upwards against the dingy white paint
of the wall. The figure mounted steadily and came directly to the open
door--a lady in a long black cloak that quite hid her dress. She wore
no hat, but her head was altogether covered by one of those things
which are neither hoods nor mantillas nor veils, but which serve women
for any of the three, according to weather and circumstances. The
peculiarity of the one the lady wore was that it cast a deep shadow
over her face.

'Come in,' said Mr. Van Torp, withdrawing into the entry to make way.

She entered and went on directly to the sitting-room, while he shut
the outer door. Then he followed her, and shut the second door behind
him. She was standing before the fire spreading her gloved hands to
the blaze, as if she were cold. The gloves were white, and they fitted
very perfectly. As he came near, she turned and held out one hand.

'All right?' he inquired, shaking it heartily, as if it had been a
man's.

A sweet low voice answered him.

'Yes--all right,' it said, as if nothing could ever be wrong with
its possessor. 'But you?' it asked directly afterwards, in a tone of
sympathetic anxiety.

'I? Oh--well--' Mr. Van Torp's incomplete answer might have meant
anything, except that he too was 'all right.'

'Yes,' said the lady gravely. 'I read the telegram the next day. Did
you get my cable? I did not think you would sail.'

'Yes, I got your cable. Thank you. Well--I did sail, you see. Take off
your things. The water's boiling and we'll have tea in a minute.'

The lady undid the fastening at her throat so that the fur-lined cloak
opened and slipped a little on her white shoulders. She held it in
place with one hand, and with the other she carefully turned back the
lace hood from her face, so as not to disarrange her hair. Mr. Van
Torp was making tea, and he looked up at her over the teapot.

'I dressed for dinner,' she said, explaining.

'Well,' said Mr. Van Torp, looking at her, 'I should think you did!'

There was real admiration in his tone, though it was distinctly
reluctant.

'I thought it would save half an hour and give us more time together,'
said the lady simply.

She sat down in the shabby easy-chair, and as she did so the cloak
slipped and lay about her waist, and she gathered one side of it over
her knees. Her gown was of black velvet, without so much as a bit of
lace, except at the sleeves, and the only ornament she wore was a
short string of very perfect pearls clasped round her handsome young
throat.

She was handsome, to say the least. If tired ghosts of departed
barristers were haunting the dingy room in Hare Court that night, they
must have blinked and quivered for sheer pleasure at what they saw,
for Mr. Van Torp's visitor was a very fine creature to look at; and if
ghosts can hear, they heard that her voice was sweet and low, like an
evening breeze and flowing water in a garden, even in the Garden of
Eden.

She was handsome, and she was young; and above all she had the
freshness, the uncontaminated bloom, the subdued brilliancy of
nature's most perfect growing things. It was in the deep clear eyes,
in the satin sheen of her bare shoulders under the sordid gaslight; it
was in the strong smooth lips, delicately shaded from salmon colour to
the faintest peach-blossom; it was in the firm oval of her face, in
the well-modelled ear, the straight throat and the curving neck; it
was in her graceful attitude; it was everywhere. 'No doubt,' the
ghosts might have said, 'there are more beautiful women in England
than this one, but surely there is none more like a thoroughbred and a
Derby winner!'

'You take sugar, don't you?' asked Mr. Van Torp, having got the lid
off the old tobacco-tin with some difficulty, for it had developed an
inclination to rust since it had last been moved.

'One lump, please,' said the thoroughbred, looking at the fire.

'I thought I remembered,' observed the millionaire. 'The tea's good,'
he added, 'and you'll have to excuse the cup. And there's no cream.'

'I'll excuse anything,' said the lady, 'I'm so glad to be here!'

'Well, I'm glad to see you too,' said Mr. Van Torp, giving her the
cup. 'Crackers? I'll see if there're any in the cupboard. I forgot.'

He went to the corner again and found a small tin of biscuits, which
he opened and examined under gaslight.

'Mouldy,' he observed. 'Weevils in them, too. Sorry. Does it matter
much?'

'Nothing matters,' answered the lady, sweet and low. 'But why do you
put them away if they are bad? It would be better to burn them and be
done with it.'

He was taking the box back to the cupboard.

'I suppose you're right,' he said reluctantly. 'But it always seems
wicked to burn bread, doesn't it?'

'Not when it's weevilly,' replied the thoroughbred, after sipping the
hot tea.

He emptied the contents of the tin upon the coal fire, and the room
presently began to smell of mouldy toast.

'Besides,' he said, 'it's cruel to burn weevils, I suppose. If I'd
thought of that, I'd have left them alone. It's too late now. They're
done for, poor beasts! I'm sorry. I don't like to kill things.'

He stared thoughtfully at the already charred remains of the
holocaust, and shook his head a little. The lady sipped her tea and
looked at him quietly, perhaps affectionately, but he did not see her.

'You think I'm rather silly sometimes, don't you?' he asked, still
gazing at the fire.

'No,' she answered at once. 'It's never silly to be kind, even to
weevils.'

'Thank you for thinking so,' said Mr. Van Torp, in an oddly humble
tone, and he began to drink his own tea.

If Margaret Donne could have suddenly found herself perched among the
chimney-pots on the opposite roof, and if she had then looked at his
face through the window, she would have wondered why she had ever felt
a perfectly irrational terror of him. It was quite plain that the lady
in black velvet had no such impression.

'You need not be so meek,' she said, smiling.

She did not laugh often, but sometimes there was a ripple in her fresh
voice that would turn a man's head. Mr. Van Torp looked at her in a
rather dull way.

'I believe I feel meek when I'm with you. Especially just now.'

He swallowed the rest of his tea at a gulp, set the cup on the table,
and folded his hands loosely together, his elbows resting on his
knees; in this attitude he leaned forward and looked at the burning
coals. Again his companion watched his hard face with affectionate
interest.

'Tell me just how it happened,' she said. 'I mean, if it will help you
at all to talk about it.'

'Yes. You always help me,' he answered, and then paused. 'I think I
should like to tell you the whole thing,' he added after an instant.
'Somehow, I never tell anybody much about myself.'

'I know.'

She bent her handsome head in assent. Just then it would have been
very hard to guess what the relations were between the oddly assorted
pair, as they sat a little apart from each other before the grate.
Mr. Van Torp was silent now, as if he were making up his mind how to
begin.

In the pause, the lady quietly held out her hand towards him. He saw
without turning further, and he stretched out his own. She took it
gently, and then, without warning, she leaned very far forward, bent
over it and touched it with her lips. He started and drew it back
hastily. It was as if the leaf of a flower had settled upon it, and
had hovered an instant, and fluttered away in a breath of soft air.

'Please don't!' he cried, almost roughly. 'There's nothing to thank me
for. I've often told you so.'

But the lady was already leaning back in the old easy-chair again as
if she had done nothing at all unusual.

'It wasn't for myself,' she said. 'It was for all the others, who will
never know.'

'Well, I'd rather not,' he answered. 'It's not worth all that. Now,
see here! I'm going to tell you as near as I can what happened, and
when you know you can make up your mind. You never saw but one side of
me anyhow, but you've got to see the other sooner or later. No, I know
what you're going to say--all that about a dual nature, and Jekyll and
Hyde, and all the rest of it. That may be true for nervous people, but
I'm not nervous. Not at all. I never was. What I know is, there are
two sides to everybody, and one's always the business side. The other
may be anything. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. Sometimes
it cares for a woman, sometimes it's a collector of art things,
Babylonian glass, and Etruscan toys and prehistoric dolls. It may
gamble, or drink, or teach a Sunday school, or read Dante, or shoot,
or fish, or anything that's of no use. But one side's always the
business side. That's certain.'

Mr. Van Torp paused, and looked at his companion's empty cup. Seeing
that he was going to get up in order to give her more, she herself
rose quickly and did it for herself. He sat still and watched her,
probably because the business side of his nature judged that he could
be of no use. The fur-lined cloak was now lying in the easy-chair, and
there was nothing to break the sweeping lines of the black velvet from
her dazzling shoulders to her waist, to her knee, to her feet. Mr. Van
Torp watched her in silence, till she sat down again.

'You know me well enough to understand that,' he said, going on. 'My
outside's my business side, and that's what matters most. Now the
plain truth is this. My engagement to Miss Bamberger was just a
business affair. Bamberger thought of it first, and suggested it to
me, and he asked her if she'd mind being engaged to me for a few
weeks; and she said she wouldn't provided she wasn't expected to marry
me. That was fair and square, anyway, on both sides. Wasn't it?'

'It depends on why you did it,' said the lady, going to the point
directly.

'That was the business side,' answered her companion. 'You see, a big
thing like the Nickel Trust always has a lot of enemies, besides a
heap of people who want to get some of it cheap. This time they put
their heads together and got up one of the usual stories. You see,
Isidore H. Bamberger is the president and I only appear as a director,
though most of it's mine. So they got up a story that he was operating
on his own account to get behind me, and that we were going to quarrel
over it, and there was going to be a slump, and people began to
believe it. It wasn't any use talking to the papers. We soon found
that out. Sometimes the public won't believe anything it's told, and
sometimes it swallows faster than you can feed to it. I don't know
why, though I've had a pretty long experience, but I generally do know
which state it's in. I feel it. That's what's called business ability.
It's like fishing. Any old fisherman can judge in half an hour whether
the fish are going to bite all day or not. If he's wrong once, he'll
be right a hundred times. Well, I felt talking was no good, and so did
Bamberger, and the shares began to go down before the storm. If the
big slump had come there'd have been a heap of money lost. I don't say
we didn't let the shares drop a couple of points further than they
needed to, and Bamberger bought any of it that happened to be lying
around, and the more he bought the quicker it wanted to go
down, because people said there was going to be trouble and an
investigation. But if we'd gone on, lots of people would have been
ruined, and yet we didn't just see how to stop it sharp, till
Bamberger started his scheme. Do you understand all that?'

The lady nodded gravely.

'You make it clear,' she said.

'Well, I thought it was a good scheme,' continued her companion,
'and as the girl said she didn't mind, we told we were engaged. That
settled things pretty quick. The shares went up again in forty-eight
hours, and as we'd bought for cash we made the points, and the other
people were short and lost. But when everything was all right again we
got tired of being engaged, Miss Bamberger and I; and besides, there
was a young fellow she'd a fancy for, and he kept writing to her that
he'd kill himself, and that made her nervous, you see, and she said if
it went on another day she knew she'd have appendicitis or something.
So we were going to announce that the engagement was broken. And the
very night before--'

He paused. Not a muscle of the hard face moved, there was not a change
in the expression of the tremendous mouth, there was not a tremor in
the tone; but the man kept his eyes steadily on the fire.

'Oh, well, she's dead now, poor thing,' he said presently. 'And that's
what I wanted to tell you. I suppose it's not a very pretty story, is
it? But I'll tell you one thing. Though we made a little by the turn
of the market, we saved a heap of small fry from losing all they'd put
in. If we'd let the slump come and then bought we should have made a
pile; but then we might have had difficulty in getting the stock up to
anywhere near par again for some time.'

'Besides,' said the lady quietly, 'you would not have ruined all those
little people if you could help it.'

'You think I wouldn't?' He turned his eyes to her now.

'I'm sure you would not,' said the lady with perfect confidence.

'I don't know, I'm sure,' answered Mr. Van Torp in a doubtful tone.
'Perhaps I wouldn't. But it would only have been business if I had.
It's not as if Bamberger and I had started a story on purpose about
our quarrelling in order to make things go down. I draw the line
there. That's downright dishonest, I call it. But if we'd just let
things slide and taken advantage of what happened, it would only have
been business after all. Except for that doubt about getting back
to par,' he added, as an afterthought. 'But then I should have felt
whether it was safe or not.'

'Then why did you not let things slide, as you call it?'

'I don't know, I'm sure. Maybe I was soft-hearted. We don't always
know why we do things in business. There's a great deal more in the
weather where big money is moving than you might think. For instance,
there was never a great revolution in winter. But as for making people
lose their money, those who can't keep it ought not to have it.
They're a danger to society, and half the time it's they who upset the
market by acting like lunatics. They get a lot of sentimental pity
sometimes, those people; but after all, if they didn't try to cut in
without capital, and play the game without knowing the rules, business
would be much steadier and there would be fewer panics. They're the
people who get frightened and run, not we. The fact is, they ought
never to have been there. That's why I believe in big things myself.'

He paused, having apparently reached the end of his subject.

'Were you with the poor girl when she died?' asked the lady presently.

'No. She'd dined with a party and was in their box, and they were the
last people who saw her. You read about the explosion. She bolted
from the box in the dark, I was told, and as she couldn't be found
afterwards they concluded she had rushed out and taken a cab home. It
seemed natural, I suppose.'

'Who found her at last?'

'A man called Griggs--the author, you know. He carried her to the
manager's room, still alive. They got a doctor, and as she wanted
to see a woman, they sent for Cordova, the singer, from her
dressing-room, and the girl died in her arms. They said it was heart
failure, from shock.'

'It was very sad.'

'I'm sorry for poor Bamberger,' said Mr. Van Torp thoughtfully. 'She
was his only child, and he doted on her. I never saw a man so cut up
as he looked. I wanted to stay, but he said the mere sight of me drove
him crazy, poor fellow, and as I had business over here and my passage
was taken, I just sailed. Sometimes the kindest thing one can do is
to get out. So I did. But I'm very sorry for him. I wish I could do
anything to make it easier for him. It was nobody's fault, I suppose,
though I do think the people she was with might have prevented her
from rushing out in the dark.'

'They were frightened themselves. How could any one be blamed for her
death?'

'Exactly. But if any one could be made responsible, I know Bamberger
would do for him in some way. He's a resentful sort of man if any one
does him an injury. Blood for blood is Bamberger's motto, every time.
One thing I'm sure of. He'll run down whoever was responsible for
that explosion, and he'll do for him, whoever he is, if it costs one
million to get a conviction. I wouldn't like to be the fellow!'

'I can understand wishing to be revenged for the death of one's only
child,' said the lady thoughtfully. 'Cannot you?'

The American turned his hard face to her.

'Yes,' he said, 'I can. It's only human, after all.'

She sighed and looked into the fire. She was married, but she was
childless, and that was a constant regret to her. Mr. Van Torp knew it
and understood.

'To change the subject,' he said cheerfully, 'I suppose you need
money, don't you?'

'Oh yes! Indeed I do!'

Her momentary sadness had already disappeared, and there was almost a
ripple in her tone again as she answered.

'How much?' asked the millionaire smiling.

She shook her head and smiled too; and as she met his eyes she
settled herself and leaned far back in the shabby easy-chair. She was
wonderfully graceful and good to look at in her easy attitude.

'I'm afraid to tell you how much!' She shook her head again, as she
answered.

'Well,' said Mr. Van Torp in an encouraging tone, 'I've brought some
cash in my pocket, and if it isn't enough I'll get you some more
to-morrow. But I won't give you a cheque. It's too compromising. I
thought of that before I left New York, so I brought some English
notes from there.'

'How thoughtful you always are for me!'

'It's not much to do for a woman one likes. But I'm sorry if I've
brought too little. Here it is, anyway.'

He produced a large and well-worn pocket-book, and took from it a
small envelope, which he handed to her.

'Tell me how much more you'll need,' he said, 'and I'll give it to
you to-morrow. I'll put the notes between the pages of a new book and
leave it at your door. He wouldn't open a package that was addressed
to you from a bookseller's, would he?'

'No,' answered the lady, her expression changing a little, 'I think he
draws the line at the bookseller.'

'You see, this was meant for you,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'There are your
initials on it.'

She glanced at the envelope, and saw that it was marked in pencil with
the letters M.L. in one corner.

'Thank you,' she said, but she did not open it.

'You'd better count the notes,' suggested the millionaire. 'I'm open
to making mistakes myself.'

The lady took from the envelope a thin flat package of new Bank of
England notes, folded together in four. Without separating them she
glanced carelessly at the first, which was for a hundred pounds, and
then counted the others by the edges. She counted four after the
first, and Mr. Van Torp watched her face with evident amusement.

'You need more than that, don't you?' he asked, when she had finished.

'A little more, perhaps,' she said quietly, though she could not quite
conceal her disappointment, as she folded the notes and slipped them
into the envelope again. 'But I shall try to make this last. Thank you
very much.'

'I like you,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'You're the real thing. They'd call
you a chief's daughter in the South Seas. But I'm not so mean as all
that. I only thought you might need a little cash at once. That's
all.'

A loud knocking at the outer door prevented the lady from answering.

She looked at Mr. Van Torp in surprise.

'What's that?' she asked, rather anxiously.

'I don't know,' he answered. 'He couldn't guess that you were here,
could he?'

'Oh no! That's quite out of the question!'

'Then I'll open the door,' said the millionaire, and he left the
sitting-room.

The lady had not risen, and she still leaned back in her seat. She
idly tapped the knuckles of her gloved hand with the small envelope.

The knocking was repeated, she heard the outer door opened, and the
sound of voices followed directly.

'Oh!' Mr. Van Torp exclaimed in a tone of contemptuous surprise, 'it's
you, is it? Well, I'm busy just now. I can't see you till to-morrow.'

'My business will not keep till to-morrow,' answered an oily voice in
a slightly foreign accent.

At the very first syllables the lady rose quickly to her feet, and
resting one hand on the table she leant forward in the direction of
the door, with an expression that was at once eager and anxious, and
yet quite fearless.

'What you call your business is going to wait my convenience,' said
Mr. Van Torp. 'You'll find me here to-morrow morning until eleven
o'clock.'

From the sounds the lady judged that the American now attempted to
shut the door in his visitor's face, but that he was hindered and that
a scuffle followed.

'Hold him!' cried the oily voice in a tone of command. 'Bring him in!
Lock the door!'

It was clear enough that the visitor had not come alone, and that Mr.
Van Torp had been overpowered. The lady bit her salmon-coloured lip
angrily and contemptuously.

A moment later a tall heavily-built man with thick fair hair, a long
moustache, and shifty blue eyes, rushed into the room and did not stop
till there was only the small table between him and the lady.

'I've caught you! What have you to say?' he asked.

'To you? Nothing!'

She deliberately turned her back on her husband, rested one elbow on
the mantelpiece and set one foot upon the low fender, drawing up
her velvet gown over her instep. But a moment later she heard other
footsteps in the room, and turned her head to see Mr. Van Torp enter
the room between two big men who were evidently ex-policemen. The
millionaire, having failed to shut the door in the face of the three
men, had been too wise to attempt any further resistance.

The fair man glanced down at the table and saw the envelope with his
wife's initials lying beside the tea things. She had dropped it there
when she had risen to her feet at the sound of his voice. He snatched
it away as soon as he saw the pencilled letters on it, and in a moment
he had taken out the notes and was looking over them.

'I should like you to remember this, please,' he said, addressing the
two men who had accompanied him. 'This envelope is addressed to my
wife, under her initials, in the handwriting of Mr. Van Torp. Am
I right in taking it for your handwriting?' he inquired, in a
disagreeably polite tone, and turning towards the millionaire.

'You are,' answered the American, in a perfectly colourless voice and
without moving a muscle. 'That's my writing.'

'And this envelope,' continued the husband, holding up the notes
before the men, 'contains notes to the amount of four thousand one
hundred pounds.'

'Five hundred pounds, you mean,' said the lady coldly.

'See for yourself!' retorted the fair man, raising his eyebrows and
holding out the notes.

'That's correct,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling and looking at the lady.
'Four thousand one hundred. Only the first one was for a hundred, and
the rest were thousands. I meant it for a little surprise, you see.'

'Oh, how kind! How dear and kind!' cried the lady gratefully, and with
amazing disregard of her husband's presence.

The two ex-policemen had not expected anything so interesting as this,
and their expressions were worthy of study. They had been engaged,
through a private agency, to assist and support an injured husband,
and afterwards to appear as witnesses of a vulgar clandestine meeting,
as they supposed. It was not the first time they had been employed on
such business, but they did not remember ever having had to deal with
two persons who exhibited such hardened indifference; and though the
incident of the notes was not new to them, they had never been in a
case where the amount of cash received by the lady at one time was so
very large.

'It is needless,' said the fair man, addressing them both, 'to ask
what this money was for.'

'Yes,' said Mr. Van Torp coolly. 'You needn't bother. But I'll call
your attention to the fact that the notes are not yours, and that I'd
like to see them put back into that envelope and laid on that table
before you go. You broke into my house by force anyhow. If you take
valuables away with you, which you found here, it's burglary in
England, whatever it may be in your country; and if you don't know it,
these two professional gentlemen do. So you just do as I tell you, if
you want to keep out of gaol.'

The fair man had shown a too evident intention of slipping the
envelope into his own pocket, doubtless to be produced in evidence,
but Mr. Van Torp's final argument seemed convincing.

'I have not the smallest intention of depriving my wife of the price
of my honour, sir. Indeed, I am rather flattered to find that you both
value it so highly.'

Mr. Van Torp's hard face grew harder, and a very singular light came
into his eyes. He moved forwards till he was close to the fair man.

'None of that!' he said authoritatively. 'If you say another word
against your wife in my hearing I'll make it the last you ever said to
anybody. Now you'd better be gone before I telephone for the police.
Do you understand?'

The two ex-policemen employed by a private agency thought the case was
becoming more and more interesting; but at the same time they were
made vaguely nervous by Mr. Van Torp's attitude.

'I think you are threatening me,' said the fair man, drawing back a
step, and leaving the envelope on the table.

'No,' answered his adversary, 'I'm warning you off my premises, and
if you don't go pretty soon I'll telephone for the police. Is that a
threat?'

The last question was addressed to the two men.

'No, sir,' answered one of them.

'It would hardly be to your advantage to have more witnesses of my
wife's presence here,' observed the fair man coldly, 'but as I intend
to take her home we may as well go at once. Come, Maud! The carriage
is waiting.'

The lady, whose name was now spoken for the first time since she had
entered Mr. Van Torp's lodging, had not moved from the fireplace since
she had taken up her position there. Women are as clever as Napoleon
or Julius Caesar in selecting strong positions when there is to be an
encounter, and a fireplace, with a solid mantelpiece to lean against,
to strike, to cry upon or to cling to, is one of the strongest.
The enemy is thus reduced to prowling about the room and handling
knick-knacks while he talks, or smashing them if he is of a violent
disposition.

The lady now leant back against the dingy marble shelf and laid one
white-gloved arm along it, in an attitude that was positively regal.
Her right hand might appropriately have been toying with the orb of
empire on the mantelpiece, and her left, which hung down beside her,
might have loosely held the sceptre. Mr. Van Torp, who often bought
large pictures, was reminded of one recently offered to him in
America, representing an empress. He would have bought the portrait if
the dealer could have remembered which empress it represented, but the
fact that he could not had seemed suspicious to Mr. Van Torp. It was
clearly the man's business to know empresses by sight.

From her commanding position the Lady Maud refused her husband's
invitation to go home with him.

'I shall certainly not go with you,' she said. 'Besides, I'm dining
early at the Turkish Embassy and we are going to the play. You need
not wait for me. I'll take care of myself this evening, thank you.'

'This is monstrous!' cried the fair man, and with a peculiarly
un-English gesture he thrust his hand into his thick hair.

The foreigner in despair has always amused the genuine Anglo-Saxon.
Lady Maud's lip did not curl contemptuously now, she did not raise
her eyebrows, nor did her eyes flash with scorn. On the contrary,
she smiled quite frankly, and the sweet ripple was in her voice, the
ripple that drove some men almost crazy.

'You needn't make such a fuss,' she said. 'It's quite absurd, you
know. Mr. Van Torp is an old friend of mine, and you have known him
ever so long, and he is a man of business. You are, are you not?' she
asked, looking to the American for assent.

'I'm generally thought to be that,' he answered.

'Very well. I came here, to Mr. Van Torp's rooms in the Temple,
before going to dinner, because I wished to see him about a matter of
business, in what is a place of business. It's all ridiculous nonsense
to talk about having caught me--and worse. That money is for a
charity, and I am going to take it before your eyes, and thank Mr. Van
Torp for being so splendidly generous. Now go, and take those persons
with you, and let me hear no more of this!'

Thereupon Lady Maud came forward from the mantelpiece and deliberately
took from the table the envelope which contained four thousand one
hundred pounds in new Bank of England notes; and she put it into the
bosom of her gown, and smiled pleasantly at her husband.

Mr. Van Torp watched her with genuine admiration, and when she looked
at him and nodded her thanks again, he unconsciously smiled too, and
answered by a nod of approval.

The fair-haired foreign gentleman turned to his two ex-policemen with
considerable dignity.

'You have heard and seen,' he said impressively. 'I shall expect you
to remember all this when you are in the witness-box. Let us go.'
He made a sweeping bow to his wife and Mr. Van Torp. 'I wish you an
agreeable evening,' he said.

Thereupon he marched out of the room, followed by his men, who each
made an awkward bow at nothing in particular before going out. Mr. Van
Torp followed them at some distance towards the outer door, judging
that as they had forced their way in they could probably find their
way out. He did not even go to the outer threshold, for the last of
the three shut the door behind him.

When the millionaire came back Lady Maud was seated in the easy-chair,
leaning forward and looking thoughtfully into the fire. Assuredly no
one would have suspected from her composed face that anything unusual
had happened. She glanced at her friend when he came in, but did not
speak, and he began to walk up and down on the other side of the
table, with his hands behind him.

'You've got pretty good nerves,' he said presently.

'Yes,' answered Lady Maud, still watching the coals, 'they really are
rather good.'

A long silence followed, during which she did not move and Mr. Van
Torp steadily paced the floor.

'I didn't tell a fib, either,' she said at last. 'It's charity, in its
way.'

'Certainly,' assented her friend. 'What isn't either purchase-money or
interest, or taxes, or a bribe, or a loan, or a premium, or a present,
or blackmail, must be charity, because it must be something, and it
isn't anything else you can name.'

'A present may be a charity,' said Lady Maud, still thoughtful.

'Yes,' answered Mr. Van Torp. 'It may be, but it isn't always.'

He walked twice the length of the room before he spoke again.

'Do you think it's really to be war this time?' he asked, stopping
beside the table. 'Because if it is, I'll see a lawyer before I go to
Derbyshire.'

Lady Maud looked up with a bright smile. Clearly she had been thinking
of something compared with which the divorce court was a delightful
contrast.

'I don't know,' she answered. 'It must come sooner or later, because
he wants to be free to marry that woman, and as he has not the courage
to cut my throat, he must divorce me--if he can!'

'I've sometimes thought he might take the shorter way,' said Van Torp.

'He?' Lady Maud almost laughed, but her companion looked grave.

'There's a thing called homicidal mania,' he said. 'Didn't he shoot a
boy in Russia a year ago?'

'A young man--one of the beaters. But that was an accident.'

'I'm not so sure. How about that poor dog at the Theobalds' last
September?'

'He thought the creature was mad,' Lady Maud explained.

'He knows as well as you do that there's no rabies in the British
Isles,' objected Mr. Van Torp. 'Count Leven never liked that dog for
some reason, and he shot him the first time he got a chance. He's
always killing things. Some day he'll kill you, I'm afraid.'

'I don't think so,' answered the lady carelessly. 'If he does, I hope
he'll do it neatly! I should hate to be maimed or mangled.'

'Do you know it makes me uncomfortable to hear you talk like that? I
wish you wouldn't! You can't deny that your husband's half a lunatic,
anyway. He was behaving like one here only a quarter of an hour ago,
and it's no use denying it.'

'But I'm not denying anything!'

'No, I know you're not,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'If you don't know how
crazy he is, I don't suppose any one else does. But your nerves are
better than mine, as I told you. The idea of killing anything makes
me uncomfortable, and when it comes to thinking that he really might
murder you some day--well, I can't stand it, that's all! If I didn't
know that you lock your door at night I shouldn't sleep, sometimes.
You do lock it, always, don't you?'

'Oh yes!'

'Be sure you do to-night. I wonder whether he is in earnest about the
divorce this time, or whether the whole scene was just bluff, to get
my money.'

'I don't know,' answered Lady Maud, rising. 'He needs money, I
believe, but I'm not sure that he would try to get it just in that
way.'

'Too bad? Even for him?'

'Oh dear, no! Too simple! He's a tortuous person.'

'He tried to pocket those notes with a good deal of directness!'
observed Mr. Van Torp.

'Yes. That was an opportunity that turned up unexpectedly, but he
didn't know it would. How could he? He didn't come here expecting to
find thousands of pounds lying about on the table! It was easy enough
to know that I was here, of course. I couldn't go out of my own house
on foot, in a dinner-gown, and pick up a hansom, could I? I had one
called and gave the address, and the footman remembered it and told my
husband. There's nothing more foolish than making mysteries and giving
the cabman first one address and then another. If Boris is really
going to bring a suit, the mere fact that there was no concealment as
to where I was going this evening would be strong evidence, wouldn't
it? Evidence he cannot deny, too, since he must have learnt the
address from the footman, who heard me give it! And people who make no
secret of a meeting are not meeting clandestinely, are they?'

'You argue that pretty well,' said Mr. Van Torp, smiling.

'And besides,' rippled Lady Maud's sweet voice, as she shook out the
folds of her black velvet, 'I don't care.'

Her friend held up the fur-lined cloak and put it over her shoulders.
She fastened it at the neck and then turned to the fire for a moment
before leaving.

'Rufus,' she said gravely, after a moment's pause, and looking down at
the coals, 'you're an angel.'

'The others in the game don't think so,' answered Mr. Van Torp.

'No one was ever so good to a woman as you've been to me,' said Maud.

And all at once the joyful ring had died away from her voice and there
was another tone in it that was sweet and low too, but sad and tender
and grateful, all at once.

'There's nothing to thank me for,' answered Mr. Van Torp. 'I've often
told you so. But I have a good deal of reason to be grateful to you
for all you've given me.'

'Nonsense!' returned the lady, and the sadness was gone again, but
not all the tenderness. 'I must be going,' she added a moment later,
turning away from the fire.

'I'll take you to the Embassy in a hansom,' said the millionaire,
slipping on his overcoat.

'No. You mustn't do that--we should be sure to meet some one at the
door. Are you going anywhere in particular? I'll drop you wherever you
like, and then go on. It will give us a few minutes more together.'

'Goodness knows we don't get too many!'

'No, indeed!'

So the two went down the dismal stairs of the house in Hare Court
together.




CHAPTER VI


The position of a successful lyric primadonna with regard to other
artists and the rest of the world is altogether exceptional, and
is not easy to explain. Her value for purposes of advertisement
apparently exceeds that of any other popular favourite, not to mention
the majority of royal personages. A respectable publisher has been
known to bring out a book in which he did not believe, solely because
a leading lyric soprano promised him to say in an interview that it
was the book of the year. Countless brands of cigars, cigarettes,
wines and liquors, have been the fashion with the flash crowd that
frequents public billiard-rooms and consumes unlimited tobacco and
drink, merely because some famous 'Juliet' or 'Marguerite' has
'consented' to lend her name to the articles in question; and half
the grog-shops on both sides of the Atlantic display to the admiring
street the most alarming pink and white caricatures, or monstrously
enlarged photographs, of the three or four celebrated lyric sopranos
who happen to be before the public at any one time. In the popular
mind those artists represent something which they themselves do not
always understand. There is a legend about each; she is either an
angel of purity and light, or a beautiful monster of iniquity; she
has turned the heads of kings--'kings' in a vaguely royal
plural--completely round on their shoulders, or she has built out of
her earnings a hospital for crippled children; the watery-sentimental
eye of the flash crowd in its cups sees in her a Phryne, a Mrs. Fry,
or a Saint Cecilia. Goethe said that every man must be either the
hammer or the anvil; the billiard-room public is sure that every
primadonna is a siren or a martyred wife, or else a public
benefactress, unless she is all three by turns, which is even more
interesting.

In any case, the reporters are sure that every one wants to know just
what she thinks about everything. In the United States, for instance,
her opinion on political matters is often asked, and is advertised
with 'scare-heads' that would stop a funeral or arrest the attention
of a man on his way to the gallows.

Then, too, she has her 'following' of 'girls,' thousands of whom have
her photograph, or her autograph, or both, and believe in her, and are
ready to scratch out the eyes of any older person who suggests that
she is not perfection in every way, or that to be a primadonna like
her ought not to be every girl's highest ambition. They not only
worship her, but many of them make real sacrifices to hear her sing;
for most of them are anything but well off, and to hear an opera means
living without little luxuries, and sometimes without necessaries, for
days together. Their devotion to their idol is touching and true; and
she knows it and is good-natured in the matter of autographs for them,
and talks about 'my matinée girls' to the reporters, as if those
eleven thousand virgins and more were all her younger sisters and
nieces. An actress, even the most gifted, has no such 'following.' The
greatest dramatic sopranos that ever sing Brunhilde and Kundry
enjoy no such popularity. It belongs exclusively to the nightingale
primadonnas, whose voices enchant the ear if they do not always
stir the blood. It may be explicable, but no explanation is at all
necessary, since the fact cannot be disputed.

To this amazing popularity Margaret Donne had now attained; and she
was known to the matinée girls' respectful admiration as Madame
Cordova, to the public generally and to her comrades as Cordova, to
sentimental paragraph-writers as Fair Margaret, and to her friends as
Miss Donne, or merely as Margaret. Indeed, from the name each person
gave her in speaking of her, it was easy to know the class to which
each belonged.

She had bought a house in London, because in her heart she still
thought England the finest country in the world, and had never felt
the least desire to live anywhere else. She had few relations left and
none whom she saw; for her father, the Oxford scholar, had not had
money, and they all looked with disapproval on the career she had
chosen. Besides, she had been very little in England since her
parents' death. Her mother's American friend, the excellent Mrs.
Rushmore, who had taken her under her wing, was now in Versailles,
where she had a house, and Margaret actually had the audacity to live
alone, rather than burden herself with a tiresome companion.

Her courage in doing so was perhaps mistaken, considering what the
world is and what it generally thinks of the musical and theatrical
professions; and Mrs. Rushmore, who was quite powerless to influence
Margaret's conduct, did not at all approve of it. The girl's will had
always been strong, and her immense success had so little weakened
her belief in herself, or softened her character, that she had grown
almost too independent. The spirit of independence is not a fault in
women, but it is a defect in the eyes of men. Darwin has proved that
the dominant characteristic of male animals is vanity; and what is
to become of that if women show that they can do without us? If the
emancipation of woman had gone on as it began when we were boys, we
should by this time be importing wives for our sons from Timbuctoo or
the Friendly Islands. Happily, women are practical beings who rarely
stray far from the narrow path along which usefulness and pleasure may
still go hand in hand; for considering how much most women do that
is useful, the amount of pleasure they get out of life is perfectly
amazing; and when we try to keep up with them in the chase after
amusement we are surprised at the number of useful things they
accomplish without effort in twenty-four hours.

But, indeed, women are to us very like the moon, which has shown the
earth only one side of herself since the beginning, though she has
watched and studied our world from all its sides through uncounted
ages. We men are alternately delighted, humiliated, and terrified when
women anticipate our wishes, perceive our weaknesses, and detect our
shortcomings, whether we be frisky young colts in the field or sober
stagers plodding along between the matrimonial shafts in harness and
blinkers. We pride ourselves on having the strength to smash the
shafts, shake off the harness, and kick the cart to pieces if we
choose, and there are men who can and do. But the man does not live
who knows what the dickens women are up to when he is going quietly
along the road, as a good horse should. Sometimes they are driving us,
and then there is no mistake about it; and sometimes they are just
sitting in the cart and dozing, and we can tell that they are behind
us by their weight; but very often we are neither driven by them nor
are we dragging them, and we really have not the faintest idea where
they are, so that we are reduced to telling ourselves, with a little
nervousness which we do not care to acknowledge, that it is noble and
beautiful to trust what we love.

A part of the great feminine secret is the concealment of that
independence about which there has been so much talk in our time. As
for suffrage, wherever there is such a thing, the woman who does not
vote always controls far more men's votes than the woman who goes to
the polls, and has only her own vote to give.

Margaret, the primadonna, did not want to vote for or against
anything; but she was a little too ready to assert that she could and
would lead her own life as she pleased, without danger to her good
name, because she had never done anything to be ashamed of. The
natural consequence was that she was gradually losing something
which is really much more worth having than commonplace, technical
independence. Her friend Lushington realised the change as soon as she
landed, and it hurt him to see it, because it seemed to him a great
pity that what he had thought an ideal, and therefore a natural
manifestation of art, should be losing the fine outlines that had
made it perfect to his devoted gaze. But this was not all. His rather
over-strung moral sense was offended as well as his artistic taste.
He felt that Margaret was blunting the sensibilities of her feminine
nature and wronging a part of herself, and that the delicate bloom
of girlhood was opening to a blossom that was somewhat too evidently
strong, a shade too vivid and more brilliant than beautiful.

There were times when she reminded him of his mother, and those were
some of the most painful moments of his present life. It is true that
compared with Madame Bonanni in her prime, as he remembered her,
Margaret was as a lily of the valley to a giant dahlia; yet when he
recalled the sweet and healthy English girl he had known and loved in
Versailles three years ago, the vision was delicate and fairy-like
beside the strong reality of the successful primadonna. She was so
very sure of herself now, and so fully persuaded that she was not
accountable to any one for her doings, her tastes, or the choice of
her friends! If not actually like Madame Bonanni, she was undoubtedly
beginning to resemble two or three of her famous rivals in the
profession who were nearer to her own age. Her taste did not run in
the direction of white fox cloaks, named diamonds, and imperial jade
plates; she did not use a solid gold toothbrush with emeralds set in
the handle, like Ismail Pacha; bridge did not amuse her at all, nor
could she derive pleasure from playing at Monte Carlo; she did not
even keep an eighty-horse-power motor-car worth five thousand pounds.
Paul Griggs, who was old-fashioned, called motor-cars 'sudden-death
carts,' and Margaret was inclined to agree with him. She cared for
none of these things.

Nevertheless there was a quiet thoroughgoing luxury in her existence,
an unseen private extravagance, such as Rufus Van Torp, the
millionaire, had never dreamt of. She had first determined to be a
singer in order to support herself, because she had been cheated of
a fortune by old Alvah Moon; but before she had actually made her
_début_ a handsome sum had been recovered for her, and though she was
not exactly what is now called rich, she was at least extremely well
off, apart from her professional earnings, which were very large
indeed. In the certainty that if her voice failed she would always
have a more than sufficient income for the rest of her life, and
considering that she was not under the obligation of supporting a
number of poor relations, it was not surprising that she should spend
a great deal of money on herself.

It is not every one who can be lavish without going a little beyond
the finely-drawn boundary which divides luxury from extravagance; for
useless profusion is by nature as contrary to what is aesthetic as fat
in the wrong place, and is quite as sure to be seen. To spend well
what rich people are justified in expending over and above an ample
provision for the necessities and reasonable comforts of a large
existence is an art in itself, and the modest muse of good taste loves
not the rich man for his riches, nor the successful primadonna for the
thousands she has a right to throw away if she likes.

Mr. Van Torp vaguely understood this, without at all guessing how the
great artist spent her money. He had understood at least enough to
hinder him from trying to dazzle her in the beginning of the New York
season, when he had brought siege against her.

A week after her arrival in London, Margaret was alone at her piano
and Lushington was announced. Unlike the majority of musicians in real
fiction she had not been allowing her fingers to 'wander over the
keys,' a relaxation that not seldom leads to outer darkness, where the
consecutive fifth plays hide-and-seek with the falling sub-tonic to
superinduce gnashing of teeth in them that hear. Margaret was learning
her part in the _Elisir d'Amore_, and instead of using her voice she
was whistling from the score and playing the accompaniment. The old
opera was to be revived during the coming season with her and the
great Pompeo Stromboli, and she was obliged to work hard to have it
ready.

The music-room had a polished wooden floor, and the furniture
consisted chiefly of a grand piano and a dozen chairs. The walls were
tinted a pale green; there were no curtains at the windows, because
they would have deadened sound, and a very small wood fire was burning
in an almost miniature fireplace quite at the other end of the room.
The sun had not quite set yet, and as the blinds were still open,
a lurid glare came in from the western sky, over the houses on the
opposite side of the wide square. There had been a heavy shower, but
the streets were already drying. One shaded electric lamp stood on the
desk of the piano, and the rest of the room was illuminated by the
yellowish daylight.

Margaret was very much absorbed in her work, and did not hear the door
open; but the servant came slowly towards her, purposely making his
steps heard on the wooden floor in order to attract her attention.
When she stopped playing and whistling, and looked round, the man said
that Mr. Lushington was downstairs.

'Ask him to come up,' she answered, without hesitation.

She rose from the piano, went to the window and looked out at the
smoky sunset.

Lushington entered the room in a few moments and saw only the outline
of her graceful figure, as if she were cut out in black against the
glare from the big window. She turned, and a little of the shaded
light from the piano fell upon her face, just enough to show him her
expression, and though her glad smile welcomed him, there was anxiety
in her brown eyes. He came forward, fair and supernaturally neat, as
ever, and much more self-possessed than in former days. It was not
their first meeting since she had landed, for he had been to see her
late in the afternoon on the day of her arrival, and she had expected
him; but she had felt a sort of constraint in his manner then, which
was new to her, and they had talked for half an hour about indifferent
things. Moreover, he had refused a second cup of tea, which was a sure
sign that something was wrong. So she had asked him to come again a
week later, naming the day, and she had been secretly disappointed
because he did not protest against being put off so long. She wondered
what had happened, for his letters, his cable to her when she had left
America, and the flowers he had managed to send on board the steamer,
had made her believe that he had not changed since they had parted
before Christmas.

As she was near the piano she sat down on the stool, while he took a
small chair and established himself near the corner of the instrument,
at the upper end of the keyboard. The shaded lamp cast a little light
on both their faces, as the two looked at each other, and Margaret
realised that she was not only very fond of him, but that his whole
existence represented something she had lost and wished to get back,
but feared that she could never have again. For many months she had
not felt like her old self till a week ago, when he had come to see
her after she had landed.

They had been in love with each other before she had begun her career,
and she would have married him then, but a sort of quixotism, which
was highly honourable if nothing else, had withheld him. He had felt
that his mother's son had no right to marry Margaret Donne, though she
had told him as plainly as a modest girl could that she was not of the
same opinion. Then had come Logotheti's mad attempt to carry her off
out of the theatre, after the dress rehearsal before her début, and
Madame Bonanni and Lushington between them had spirited her away just
in time. After that it had been impossible for him to keep up the
pretence of avoiding her, and a sort of intimacy had continued, which
neither of them quite admitted to be love, while neither would have
called it mere friendship.

The most amazing part of the whole situation was that Margaret had
continued to see Logotheti as if he had not actually tried to carry
her off in his motor-car, very much against her will. And in spite of
former jealousies and a serious quarrel Logotheti and Lushington spoke
to each other when they met. Possibly Lushington consented to treat
him civilly because the plot for carrying off Margaret had so
completely failed that its author had got himself locked up on
suspicion of being a fugitive criminal. Lushington, feeling that he
had completely routed his rival on that occasion, could afford to be
generous. Yet the man of letters, who was a born English gentleman on
his father's side, and who was one altogether by his bringing up, was
constantly surprised at himself for being willing to shake hands with
a Greek financier who had tried to run away with an English girl; and
possibly, in the complicated workings of his mind and conflicting
sensibilities, half Anglo-Saxon and half Southern French, his present
conduct was due to the fact that Margaret Donne had somehow ceased to
be a 'nice English girl' when she joined the cosmopolitan legion that
manoeuvres on the international stage of 'Grand Opera.' How could a
'nice English girl' remain herself if she associated daily with
such people as Pompeo Stromboli, Schreiermeyer, Herr Tiefenbach and
Signorina Baci-Roventi, the Italian contralto who could pass for a man
so well that she was said to have fought a real duel with sabres and
wounded her adversary before he discovered that she was the very lady
he had lately left for another--a regular Mademoiselle de Maupin! Had
not Lushington once seen her kiss Margaret on both cheeks in a moment
of enthusiastic admiration? He was not the average young man who falls
in love with a singer, either; he knew the stage and its depths only
too well, for he had his own mother's life always before him, a
perpetual reproach.

Though Margaret had at first revolted inwardly against the details of
her professional surroundings, she had grown used to them by sure and
fatal degrees, and things that would once have disgusted her were
indifferent to her now. Men who have been educated in conditions of
ordinary refinement and who have volunteered in the ranks or gone to
sea before the mast have experienced something very like what befell
Margaret; but men are not delicately nurtured beings whose bloom is
damaged by the rough air of reality, and the camp and the forecastle
are not the stage. Perhaps nothing that is necessary shocks really
sensible people; it is when disagreeable things are perfectly useless
and quite avoidable--in theory--that they are most repugnant to men
like Edmund Lushington. He had warned Margaret of what was in store
for her, before she had taken the final step; but he had not warned
himself that in spite of her bringing-up she might get used to it
all and end by not resenting it any more than the rest of the
professionals with whom she associated. It was this that chilled him.

'I hope I'm not interrupting your work,' he said as he sat down.

'My work?'

'I heard you studying when they let me in.'

'Oh!'

His voice sounded very indifferent, and a pause followed Margaret's
mild ejaculation.

'It's rather a thankless opera for the soprano, I always think,' he
observed. 'The tenor has it all his own way.'

'_The Elisir d'Amore_?'

'Yes.'

'I've not rehearsed it yet,' said Margaret rather drearily. 'I don't
know.'

He evidently meant to talk of indifferent things again, as at their
last meeting, and she felt that she was groping in the dark for
something she had lost. There was no sympathy in his voice, no
interest, and she was inclined to ask him plainly what was the matter;
but her pride hindered her still, and she only looked at him with an
expression of inquiry. He laid his hand on the corner of the piano,
and his eyes rested on the shaded lamp as if it attracted him.
Perhaps he wondered why he had nothing to say to her, and why she was
unwilling to help the conversation a little, since her new part might
be supposed to furnish matter for a few commonplace phrases. The smoky
sunset was fading outside and the room was growing dark.

'When do the rehearsals begin?' he asked after a long interval, and as
if he was quite indifferent to the answer.

'When Stromboli comes, I suppose.'

Margaret turned on the piano stool, so as to face the desk, and she
quietly closed the open score and laid it on the little table on her
other side, as if not caring to talk of it any more, but she did not
turn to him again.

'You had a great success in New York,' he said, after some time.

To this she answered nothing, but she shrugged her shoulders a little,
and though he was not looking directly at her he saw the movement,
and was offended by it. Such a little shrug was scarcely a breach of
manners, but it was on the verge of vulgarity in his eyes, because
he was persuaded that she had begun to change for the worse. He had
already told himself that her way of speaking was not what it had been
last year, and he felt that if the change went on she would set
his teeth on edge some day; and that he was growing more and more
sensitive, while she was continually becoming less so.

Margaret could not have understood that, and would have been hurt if
he had tried to explain it. She was disappointed, because his letters
had made her think that she was going to find him just as she had left
him, as indeed he had been till the moment when he saw her after her
arrival; but then he had changed at once. He had been disappointed
then, as she was now, and chilled, as she was now; he had felt that he
was shrinking from her then, as she now shrank from him. He suffered a
good deal in his quiet way, for he had never known any woman who had
moved him as she once had; but she suffered too, and in a much more
resentful way. Two years of maddening success had made her very sure
that she had a prime right to anything she wanted--within reason! If
she let him alone he would sit out his half-hour's visit, making an
idle remark now and then, and he would go away; but she would not let
him do that. It was too absurd that after a long and affectionate
intimacy they should sit there in the soft light and exchange
platitudes.

'Tom,' she said, suddenly resolving to break the ice, 'we have
been much too good friends to behave in this way to each other. If
something has come between us, I think you ought to tell me--don't
you?'

'I wish I could,' Lushington answered, after a moment's hesitation.

'If you know, you can,' said Margaret, taking the upper hand and
meaning to keep it.

'That does not quite follow.'

'Oh yes, it does,' retorted Margaret energetically. 'I'll tell you
why. If it's anything on your side, it's not fair and honest to keep
it from me after writing to me as you have written all winter. But if
it's the other way, there's nothing you can possibly know about me
which you cannot tell me, and if you think there is, then some one has
been telling you what is not true.'

'It's nothing against you; I assure you it's not.'

'Then there is a woman in the case. Why should you not say so frankly?
We are not bound to each other in any way, I'm sure. I believe I once
asked you to marry me, and you refused!' She laughed rather sharply.
'That does not constitute an engagement!'

'You put the point rather brutally, I think,' said Lushington.

'Perhaps, but isn't it quite true? It was not said in so many words,
but you knew I meant it, and but for a quixotic scruple of yours we
should have been married. I remember asking you what we were making
ourselves miserable about, since we both cared so much. It was at
Versailles, the last time we walked together, and we had stopped, and
I was digging little round holes in the road with my parasol. I'm not
going to ask you again to marry me, so there is no reason in the world
why you should behave differently to me if you have fallen in love
with some one else.'

'I'm not in love with any one,' said Lushington sharply.

'Then something you have heard about me has changed you in spite of
what you say, and I have a right to know what it is, because I've done
nothing I'm ashamed of.'

'I've not heard a word against you,' he answered, almost angrily. 'Why
do you imagine such things?'

'Because I'm honest enough to own that your friendship has meant a
great deal to me, even at a distance; and as I see that it has broken
its neck at some fence or other, I'm natural enough to ask what the
jump was like!'

He would not answer. He only looked at her suddenly for an instant,
with a slight pinching of the lids, and his blue eyes glittered a
little; then he turned away with a displeased air.

'Am I just or not?' Margaret asked, almost sternly.

'Yes, you are just,' he said, for it was impossible not to reply.

'And do you think it is just to me to change your manner altogether,
without giving me a reason? I don't!'

'You will force me to say something I would rather not say.'

'That is what I am trying to do,' Margaret retorted.

'Since you insist on knowing the truth,' answered Lushington, yielding
to what was very like necessity, 'I think you are very much changed
since I saw you last. You do not seem to me the same person.'

For a moment Margaret looked at him with something like wonder, and
her lips parted, though she said nothing. Then they met again and shut
very tight, while her brown eyes darkened till they looked almost
black; she turned a shade paler, too, and there was something almost
tragic in her face.

'I'm sorry,' Lushington said, watching her, 'but you made me tell
you.'

'Yes,' she answered slowly. 'I made you tell me, and I'm glad I did.
So I have changed as much as that, have I? In two years!'

She folded her hands on the little shelf of the empty music desk, bent
far forwards and looked down between the polished wooden bars at the
strings below, as if she were suddenly interested in the mechanism of
the piano.

Lushington turned his eyes to the darkening windows, and both sat thus
in silence for some time.

'Yes,' she repeated at last, 'I'm glad I made you tell me. It explains
everything very well.'

Still Lushington said nothing, and she was still examining the
strings. Her right hand stole to the keys, and she pressed down one
note so gently that it did not strike; she watched the little hammer
that rose till it touched the string and then fell back into its
place.

'You said I should change--I remember your words.' Her voice was quiet
and thoughtful, whatever she felt. 'I suppose there is something about
me now that grates on your nerves.'

There was no resentment in her tone, nor the least intonation of
sarcasm. But Lushington said nothing; he was thinking of the time when
he had thought her an ideal of refined girlhood, and had believed in
his heart that she could never stand the life of the stage, and would
surely give it up in sheer disgust, no matter how successful she might
be. Yet now, she did not even seem offended by what he had told her.
So much the better, he thought; for he was far too truthful to take
back one word in order to make peace, even if she burst into tears.
Possibly, of the two, his reflections were sadder than hers just then,
but she interrupted them with a question.

'Can you tell me of any one thing I do that jars on you?' she asked.
'Or is it what I say, or my way of speaking? I should like to know.'

'It's nothing, and it's everything,' answered Lushington, taking
refuge in a commonplace phrase, 'and I suppose no one else would ever
notice it. But I'm so awfully sensitive about certain things. You know
why.'

She knew why; yet it was with a sort of wonder that she asked herself
what there was in her tone or manner that could remind him of his
mother; but though she had spoken quietly, and almost humbly, a cold
and secret anger was slowly rising in her. The great artist, who held
thousands spellbound and breathless, could not submit easily to losing
in such a way the only friendship that had ever meant much to her. The
man who had just told her that she had lost her charm for him meant
that she was sinking to the level of her surroundings, and he was the
only man she had ever believed that she loved. Two years ago, and even
less, she would have been generously angry with him, and would have
spoken out, and perhaps all would have been over; but those two years
of life on the stage had given her the self-control of an actress when
she chose to exercise it, and she had acquired an artificial command
of her face and voice which had not belonged to her original frank and
simple self. Perhaps Lushington knew that too, as a part of the change
that offended his taste. At twenty-two, Margaret Donne would have
coloured, and would have given him a piece of her young mind very
plainly; Margarita da Cordova, aged twenty-four, turned a trifle
paler, shut her lips, and was frigidly angry, as if some ignorant
music-hall reporter had attacked her singing in print. She was
convinced that Lushington was mistaken, and that he was merely
yielding to that love of finding fault with what he liked which a
familiar passage in Scripture attributes to the Divinity, but with
which many of us are better acquainted in our friends; in her opinion,
such fault-finding was personal criticism, and it irritated her
vanity, over-fed with public adulation and the sincere praise of
musical critics. 'If you don't like me as I am, there are so many
people who do that you don't count!' That was the sub-conscious form
of her mental retort, and it was in the manner of Cordova, and not of
Margaret.

Once upon a time, when his exaggerated sense of honour was driving him
away, she had said rather foolishly that if he left her she would not
answer for herself. She had felt a little desperate, but he had told
her quietly that he, who knew her, would answer for her, and her mood
had changed, and she had been herself again. But it was different this
time. He meant much more than he said; he meant that she had lowered
herself, and she was sure that he would not 'answer' for her now. On
the contrary, it was his intention to let her know that he no longer
believed in her, and perhaps no longer respected or trusted her. Yet,
little by little, during their last separation, his belief in her, and
his respect for her, had grown in her estimation, because they alone
still connected her with the maidenliness and feminine refinement in
which she had grown up. Lushington had broken a link that had been
strong.

She was at one of the cross-roads of her life; she was at a turning
point in the labyrinth, after passing which it would be hard to come
back and find the right way. Perhaps old Griggs could help her if it
occurred to him; but that was unlikely, for he had reached the age
when men who have seen much take people as they find them. Logotheti
would certainly not help her, though she knew instinctively that she
was still to him what she had always been, and that if he ever had the
opportunity he sought, her chances of escape would be small indeed.

Therefore she felt more lonely after Lushington had spoken than she
had ever felt since her parents had died, and much more desperate. But
nothing in the world would have induced her to let him know it, and
her anger against him rose slowly, and it was cold and enduring, as
that sort of resentment is. She was so proud that it gave her the
power to smile carelessly after a minute's silence, and she asked him
some perfectly idle questions about the news of the day. He should
not know that he had hurt her very much; he should not suspect for a
moment that she wished him to go away.

She rose presently and turned up the lights, rang the bell, and
when the window curtains were drawn, and tea was brought, she did
everything she could to make Lushington feel at his ease; she did it
out of sheer pride, for she did not meditate any vengeance, but was
only angry, and wished to get rid of him without a scene.

At last he rose to go away, and when he held out his hand there was a
dramatic moment.

'I hope you're not angry with me,' he said with a cheerful smile, for
he was quite sure that she bore him no lasting grudge.

'I?'

She laughed so frankly and musically after pronouncing the syllable,
that he took it for a disclaimer.

So he went away, shutting the door after him in a contented way,
not sharply as if he were annoyed with her, nor very softly and
considerately as if he were sorry for her, but with a moderate,
businesslike snap of the latch as if everything were all right.

She went back to the piano when she was alone, and sat down on the
music-stool, but her hands did not go to the keys till she was sure
that Lushington was already far from the house.

A few chords, and then she suddenly began to sing with the full power
of her voice, as if she were on the stage. She sang Rosina's song in
the _Barbiere di Siviglia_ as she had never sung it in her life, and
for the first time the words pleased her.

  '... una vipera sarò!'

What 'nice English girl' ever told herself or any one else that she
would be a 'viper'?




CHAPTER VII


Two days later Margaret was somewhat surprised by an informal
invitation to dine at the Turkish Embassy. The Ambassador had lately
been transferred to London from Paris, where she had known him through
Logotheti and had met him two or three times. The latter, as a
Fanariote Greek, was a Turkish subject, and although he had once told
Margaret that the Turks had murdered his father in some insurrection,
and though he himself might have hesitated to spend much time in
Constantinople, he nevertheless maintained friendly relations with
the representatives of what was his country; and for obvious reasons,
connected with Turkish finance, they treated him with marked
consideration. On general principles and in theory Turks and Greeks
hate each other; in practice they can live very amicably side by side.
In the many cases in which Armenians have been attacked and killed by
the Turks no Greek has ever been hurt except by accident; on the other
hand, none has lifted a hand to defend an Armenian in distress,
which sufficiently proves that the question of religion has not been
concerned at all.

Margaret accepted the Ambassador's invitation, feeling tolerably sure
of meeting Logotheti at the dinner. If there were any other women they
would be of the meteoric sort, the fragments of former social planets
that go on revolving in the old orbit, more or less divorced,
bankrupt, or otherwise unsound, though still smart, the kind of women
who are asked to fill a table on such occasions 'because they
won't mind'--that is to say, they will not object to dining with a
primadonna or an actress whose husband has become nebulous and whose
reputation is mottled. The men, of whom there might be several, would
be either very clever or overpoweringly noble, because all geniuses
and all peers are supposed to like their birds of paradise a little
high. I wonder why. I have met and talked with a good many men
of genius, from Wagner and Liszt to Zola and some still living
contemporaries, and, really, their general preference for highly
correct social gatherings has struck me as phenomenal. There are even
noblemen who seem to be quite respectable, and pretend that they would
rather talk to an honest woman at a dinner party than drink bumpers of
brut champagne out of Astarte's satin slipper.

Mustapha Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador, was a fair, pale man of fifty,
who had spiritual features, quiet blue eyes, and a pleasant smile. His
hands were delicately made and very white, but not effeminate. He had
been educated partly in England, and spoke English without difficulty
and almost without accent, as Logotheti did. He came forward to meet
Margaret as she entered the room, and he greeted her warmly, thanking
her for being so good as to come at short notice.

Logotheti was the next to take her hand, and she looked at him
attentively when her eyes met his, wondering whether he, too, would
think her changed. He himself was not, at all events. Mustapha Pasha,
a born Musalman and a genuine Turk, never arrested attention in an
English drawing-room by his appearance; but Constantino Logotheti, the
Greek, was an Oriental in looks as well as in character. His beautiful
eyes were almond-shaped, his lips were broad and rather flat, and the
small black moustache grew upwards and away from them so as not to
hide his mouth at all. He had an even olive complexion, and any judge
of men would have seen at a glance that he was thoroughly sound and
as strong as a professional athlete. His coat had a velvet collar; a
single emerald stud, worth several thousand pounds, diffused a green
refulgence round itself in the middle of his very shiny shirt front;
his waistcoat was embroidered and adorned with diamond buttons, his
trousers were tight, and his name, with those of three or four other
European financiers, made it alternately possible or impossible for
impecunious empires and kingdoms to raise money in England, France and
Germany. In matters of business, in the East, the Jew fears the Greek,
the Greek fears the Armenian, the Armenian fears the Persian, and
the Persian fears only Allah. One reason why the Jews do not care to
return to Palestine and Asia Minor is that they cannot get a living
amongst Christians and Mohammedans, a plain fact which those
eminent and charitable European Jews who are trying to draw their
fellow-believers eastward would do well to consider. Even in Europe
there are far more poor Jews than Christians realise; in Asia there
are hardly any rich ones. The Venetians were too much for Shylock,
and he lost his ducats and his daughter; amongst Christian Greeks,
Christian Armenians, and Musalman Persians, from Constantinople to
Tiflis, Teheran, Bagdad and Cairo, the poor man could not have saved
sixpence a year.

This is not a mere digression, since it may serve to define
Logotheti's position in the scale of the financial forces.

Margaret took his hand and looked at him just a little longer than she
had looked at Mustapha Pasha. He never wrote to her, and never took
the trouble to let her know where he was; but when they met his time
was hers, and when he could be with her he seemed to have no other
pre-occupation in life.

'I came over from Paris to-day,' he said. 'When may I come and see
you?'

That was always the first question, for he never wasted time.

'To-morrow, if you like. Come late--about seven.'

The Ambassador was on her other side. A little knot of men and one
lady were standing near the fire in an expectant sort of way, ready to
be introduced to Margaret. She saw the bony head of Paul Griggs, and
she smiled at him from a distance. He was talking to a very handsome
and thoroughbred looking woman in plain black velvet, who had the most
perfectly beautiful shoulders Margaret had ever seen.

Mustapha Pasha led the Primadonna to the group.

'Lady Maud,' he said to the beauty, 'this is my old friend Señorita da
Cordova. Countess Leven,' he added, for Margaret's benefit.

She had not met him more than three times, but she did not resent
being called his old friend. It was well meant, she thought.

Lady Maud held out her hand cordially.

'I've wanted to know you ever so long,' she said, in her sweet low
voice.

'That's very kind of you,' Margaret answered.

It is not easy to find a proper reply to people who say they have long
hoped to meet you, but Griggs came to the rescue, as he shook hands in
his turn.

'That was not a mere phrase,' he said with a smile. 'It's quite true.
Lady Maud wanted me to give her a letter to you a year ago.'

'Indeed I did,' asseverated the beauty, nodding, 'but Mr. Griggs said
he didn't know you well enough!'

'You might have asked me,' observed Logotheti. 'I'm less cautious than
Griggs.'

'You're too exotic,' retorted Lady Maud, with a ripple in her voice.

The adjective described the Greek so well that the others laughed.

'Exotic,' Margaret repeated the word thoughtfully.

'For that matter,' put in Mustapha Pasha with a smile, 'I can hardly
be called a native!'

The Countess Leven looked at him critically.

'You could pass for one,' she said, 'but Monsieur Logotheti couldn't.'
The other men, whom Margaret did not know, had been listening in
silence, and maintained their expectant attitude. In the pause which
followed Lady Maud's remark the Ambassador introduced them in foreign
fashion: one was a middle-aged peer who wore gold-rimmed spectacles
and looked like a student or a man of letters; another was the most
successful young playwright of the younger generation, and he wore a
very good coat and was altogether well turned out, for in his heart he
prided himself on being the best groomed man in London; a third was
a famous barrister who had a crisp and breezy way with him that made
flat calms in conversation impossible. Lastly, a very disagreeable
young man, who seemed a mere boy, was introduced to the Primadonna.

'Mr. Feist,' said the Ambassador, who never forgot names.

Margaret was aware of a person with an unhealthy complexion, thick
hair of a dead-leaf brown colour, and staring blue eyes that made her
think of glass marbles. The face had an unnaturally youthful look, and
yet, at the same time, there was something profoundly vicious about
it. Margaret wondered who in the world the young man might be and why
he was at the Turkish Embassy, apparently invited there to meet her.
She at once supposed that in spite of his appearance he must have some
claim to celebrity.

'I'm a great admirer of yours, Señorita,' said Mr. Feist in a womanish
voice and with a drawl. 'I was in the Metropolitan in New York when
you sang in the dark and prevented a panic. I suppose that was about
the finest thing any singer ever did.'

Margaret smiled pleasantly, though she felt the strongest repulsion
for the man.

'I happened to be on the stage,' she said modestly. 'Any of the others
would have done the same.'

'Well,' drawled Mr. Feist, 'may be. I doubt it.'

Dinner was announced.

'Will you keep house for me?' asked the Ambassador of Lady Maud.

'There's something rather appropriate about your playing Ambassadress
here,' observed Logotheti.

Margaret heard but did not understand that her new acquaintance was
a Russian subject. Mustapha Pasha held out his arm to take her in to
dinner. The spectacled peer took in Lady Maud, and the men straggled
in. At table Lady Maud sat opposite the Pasha, with the peer on her
right and the barrister on her left. Margaret was on the right of the
Ambassador, on whose other side Griggs was placed, and Logotheti
was Margaret's other neighbour. Feist and the young playwright were
together, between Griggs and the nobleman.

Margaret glanced round the table at the people and wondered about
them. She had heard of the barrister and the novelist, and the peer's
name had a familiar sound that suggested something unusual, though she
could not quite remember what it was. It might be pictures, or the
north pole, or the divorce court, or a new idiot asylum; it would
never matter much. The new acquaintances on whom her attention fixed
itself were Lady Maud, who attracted her strongly, and Mr. Feist,
who repelled her. She wished she could speak Greek in order to ask
Logotheti who the latter was and why he was present. To judge by
appearances he was probably a rich young American who travelled and
frequented theatres a good deal, and who wished to be able to say
that he knew Cordova. He had perhaps arrived lately with a letter
of introduction to the Ambassador, who had asked him to the first
nondescript informal dinner he gave, because the man would not have
fitted in anywhere else.

Logotheti began to talk at once, while Mustapha Pasha plunged into a
political conversation with Griggs.

'I'm much more glad to see you than you can imagine,' the Greek said,
not in an undertone, but just so softly that no one else could hear
him.

'I'm not good at imagining,' answered Margaret. 'But I'm glad you are
here. There are so many new faces.'

'Happily you are not shy. One of your most enviable qualities is your
self-possession.'

'You're not lacking in that way either,' laughed Margaret. 'Unless you
have changed very much.'

'Neither of us has changed much since last year. I only wish you
would!'

Margaret turned her head to look at him.

'So you think I am not changed!' she said, with a little pleased
surprise in her tone.

'Not a bit. If anything, you have grown younger in the last two
years.'

'Does that mean more youthful? More frisky? I hope not!'

'No, not at all. What I see is the natural effect of vast success on a
very, nice woman. Formerly, even after you had begun your career,
you had some doubts as to the ultimate result. The future made you
restless, and sometimes disturbed the peace of your face a little,
when you thought about it too much. That's all gone now, and you are
your real self, as nature meant you to be.'

'My real self? You mean, the professional singer!'

'No. A great artist, in the person of a thoroughly nice woman.'

Margaret had thought that blushing was a thing of the past with her,
but a soft colour rose in her cheeks now, from sheer pleasure at what
he had said.

'I hope you don't think it impertinent of me to tell you so,' said
Logotheti with a slight intonation of anxiety.

'Impertinent!' cried Margaret. 'It's the nicest thing any one has said
to me for months, and thank goodness I'm not above being pleased.'

Nor was Logotheti above using any art that could please her. His
instinct about women, finding no scruples in the way, had led him into
present favour by the shortest road. It is one thing to say brutally
that all women like flattery; it is quite another to foresee just what
form of flattery they will like. People who do not know professional
artistic life from the inner side are much too ready to cry out that
first-class professionals will swallow any amount of undiscriminating
praise. The ability to judge their own work is one of the gifts which
place them above the second class.

'I said what I thought,' observed Logotheti with a sudden air of
conscientious reserve. 'For once in our acquaintance, I was not
thinking of pleasing you. And then I was afraid that I had displeased
you, as I so often have.'

The last words were spoken with a regret that was real.

'I have forgiven you,' said Margaret quietly; 'with conditions!' she
added, as an afterthought, and smiling.

'Oh, I know--I'll never do it again.'

'That's what a runaway horse seems to say when he walks quietly home,
with his head down and his ears limp, after nearly breaking one's
neck!'

'I was a born runaway,' said Logotheti meekly, 'but you have cured
me.'

In the pause that followed this speech, Mr. Feist leaned forward and
spoke to Margaret across the table.

'I think we have a mutual friend, Madame,' he said.

'Indeed?' Margaret spoke coolly; she did not like to be called
'Madame' by people who spoke English.

'Mr. Van Torp,' explained the young man.

'Yes,' Margaret said, after a moment's hesitation, 'I know Mr. Van
Torp; he came over on the same steamer.'

The others at the table were suddenly silent, and seemed to be
listening. Lady Maud's clear eyes rested on Mr. Feist's face.

'He's quite a wonderful man, I think,' observed the latter.

'Yes,' assented the Primadonna indifferently.

'Don't you think he is a wonderful man?' insisted Mr. Feist, with his
disagreeable drawl.

'I daresay he is,' Margaret answered, 'but I don't know him very
well.'

'Really? That's funny!'

'Why?'

'Because I happen to know that he thinks everything of you, Madame
Cordova. That's why I supposed, you were intimate friends.'

The others had listened hitherto in a sort of mournful silence,
distinctly bored. Lady Maud's eyes now turned to Margaret, but the
latter still seemed perfectly indifferent, though she was wishing that
some one else would speak. Griggs turned to Mr. Feist, who was next to
him.

'You mean that he is a wonderful man of business, perhaps,' he said.

'Well, we all know he's that, anyway,' returned his neighbour. 'He's
not exactly a friend of mine, not exactly!' A meaning smile wrinkled
the unhealthy face and suddenly made it look older. 'All the same, I
think he's quite wonderful. He's not merely an able man, he's a man of
powerful intellect.'

'A Nickel Napoleon,' suggested the barrister, who was bored to death
by this time, and could not imagine why Lady Maud followed the
conversation with so much interest.

'Your speaking of nickel,' said the peer, at her elbow, 'reminds me of
that extraordinary new discovery--let me see--what is it?'

'America?' suggested the barrister viciously.

'No,' said his lordship, with perfect gravity, 'it's not that. Ah yes,
I remember! It's a process for making nitric acid out of air.'

Lady Maud nodded and smiled, as if she knew all about it, but her eyes
were again scrutinising Mr. Feist's face. Her neighbour, whose hobby
was applied science, at once launched upon a long account of the
invention. From time to time the beauty nodded and said that she quite
understood, which was totally untrue, but well meant.

'That young man has the head of a criminal,' said the barrister on her
other side, speaking very low.

She bent her head very slightly, to show that she had heard, and she
continued to listen to the description of the new process. By this
time every one was talking again. Mr. Feist was in conversation with
Griggs, and showed his profile to the barrister, who quietly studied
the retreating forehead and the ill-formed jaw, the latter plainly
discernible to a practised eye, in spite of the round cheeks. The
barrister was a little mad on the subject of degeneracy, and knew that
an unnaturally boyish look in a grown man is one of the signs of it.
In the course of a long experience at the bar he had appeared in
defence of several 'high-class criminals.' By way of comparing Mr.
Feist with a perfectly healthy specimen of humanity, he turned to look
at Logotheti beside him. Margaret was talking with the Ambassador, and
the Greek was just turning to talk to his neighbour, so that their
eyes met, and each waited for the other to speak first.

'Are you a judge of faces?' asked the barrister after a moment.

'Men of business have to be, to some extent,' answered Logotheti.

'So do lawyers. What should you say was the matter with that one?'

It was impossible to doubt that he was speaking of the only abnormal
head at the table, and Logotheti looked across the wide table at Mr.
Feist for several seconds before he answered.

'Drink,' he said in an undertone, when he had finished his
examination.

'Yes. Anything else?'

'May go mad any day, I should think,' observed Logotheti.

'Do you know anything about him?'

'Never saw him before.'

'And we shall probably never see him again,' said the Englishman.
'That's the worst of it. One sees such heads occasionally, but one
very rarely hears what becomes of them.'

The Greek did not care a straw what became of Mr. Feist's head, for he
was waiting to renew his conversation with Margaret.

Mustapha Pasha told her that she should go to Constantinople some day
and sing to the Sultan, who would give her a pretty decoration in
diamonds; and she laughed carelessly and answered that it might be
very amusing.

'I shall be very happy to show you the way,' said the Pasha. 'Whenever
you have a fancy for the trip, promise to let me know.'

Margaret had no doubt that he was quite in earnest, and would enjoy
the holiday vastly. She was used to such kind offers and knew how to
laugh at them, though she was very well aware that they were not made
in jest.

'I have a pretty little villa on the Bosphorus,' said the Ambassador,
'If you should ever come to Constantinople it is at your disposal,
with everything in it, as long as you care to use it.'

'It's too good of you!' she answered. 'But I have a small house of my
own here which is very comfortable, and I like London.'

'I know,' answered the Pasha blandly; 'I only meant to suggest a
little change.'

He smiled pleasantly, as if he had meant nothing, and there was a
pause, of which Logotheti took advantage.

'You are admirable,' he said.

'I have had much more magnificent invitations,' she answered. 'You
once wished to give me your yacht as a present if I would only make
a trip to Crete--with a party of archaeologists! An archduke once
proposed to take me for a drive in a cab!'

'If I remember,' said Logotheti, 'I offered you the owner with the
yacht. But I fancy you thought me too "exotic," as Countess Leven
calls me.'

'Oh, much!' Margaret laughed again, and then lowered her voice, 'by
the bye, who is she?'

'Lady Maud? Didn't you know her? She is Lord Creedmore's daughter, one
of seven or eight, I believe. She married a Russian in the diplomatic
service, four years ago--Count Leven--but everybody here calls her
Lady Maud. She hadn't a penny, for the Creedmores are poor. Leven was
supposed to be rich, but there are all sorts of stories about him, and
he's often hard up. As for her, she always wears that black velvet
gown, and I've been told that she has no other. I fancy she gets a new
one every year. But people say--'

Logotheti broke off suddenly.

'What do they say?' Margaret was interested.

'No, I shall not tell you, because I don't believe it.'

'If you say you don't believe the story, what harm can there be in
telling it?'

'No harm, perhaps. But what is the use of repeating a bit of wicked
gossip?'

Margaret's curiosity was roused about the beautiful Englishwoman.

'If you won't tell me, I may think it is something far worse!'

'I'm sure you could not imagine anything more unlikely!'

'Please tell me! Please! I know it's mere idle curiosity, but you've
roused it, and I shall not sleep unless I know.'

'And that would be bad for your voice.'

'Of course! Please--'

Logotheti had not meant to yield, but he could not resist her winning
tone.

'I'll tell you, but I don't believe a word of it, and I hope you will
not either. The story is that her husband found her with Van Torp
the other evening in rooms he keeps in the Temple, and there was an
envelope on the table addressed to her in his handwriting, in which
there were four thousand one hundred pounds in notes.'

Margaret looked thoughtfully at Lady Maud before she answered.

'She? With Mr. Van Torp, and taking money from him? Oh no! Not with
that face!'

'Besides,' said Logotheti, 'why the odd hundred? The story gives too
many details. People never know as much of the truth as that.'

'And if it is true,' returned Margaret, 'he will divorce her, and then
we shall know.'

'For that matter,' said the Greek contemptuously, 'Leven would not be
particular, provided he had his share of the profits.'

'Is it as bad as that? How disgusting! Poor woman!'

'Yes. I fancy she is to be pitied. In connection with Van Torp, may I
ask an indiscreet question?'

'No question you can ask me about him can be indiscreet. What is it?'

'Is it true that he once asked you to marry him and you refused him?'

Margaret turned her pale face to Logotheti with a look of genuine
surprise.

'Yes. It's true. But I never told any one. How in the world did you
hear it?'

'And he quite lost his head, I heard, and behaved like a madman--'

'Who told you that?' asked Margaret, more and more astonished, and not
at all pleased.

'He behaved so strangely that you ran into the next room and bolted
the door, and waited till he went away--'

'Have you been paying a detective to watch me?'

There was anger in her eyes for a moment, but she saw at once that she
was mistaken.

'No,' Logotheti answered with a smile, 'why should I? If a detective
told me anything against you I should not believe it, and no one could
tell me half the good I believe about you!'

'You're really awfully nice,' laughed Margaret, for she could not help
being flattered. 'Forgive me, please!'

'I would rather that the Nike of Samothrace should think dreadful
things of me than that she should not think of me at all!'

'Do I still remind you of her?' asked Margaret.

'Yes. I used to be quite satisfied with my Venus, but now I want the
Victory from the Louvre. It's not a mere resemblance. She is you, and
as she has no face. I see yours when I look at her. The other day I
stood so long on the landing where she is, that a watchman took me for
an anarchist waiting to deposit a bomb, and he called a policeman, who
asked me my name and occupation. I was very near being arrested--on
your account again! You are destined to turn the heads of men of
business!'

At this point Margaret became aware that she and Logotheti were
talking in undertones, while the conversation at the table had become
general, and she reluctantly gave up the idea of again asking where he
had got his information about her interview with Mr. Van Torp in New
York. The dinner came to an end before long, and the men went out with
the ladies, and began to smoke in the drawing-room, standing round the
coffee.

Lady Maud put her arm through Margaret's.

'Cigarettes are bad for your throat, I'm sure,' she said, 'and I hate
them.'

She led the Primadonna away through a curtained door to a small room
furnished according to Eastern ideas of comfort, and she sat down on a
low, hard divan, which was covered with a silk carpet. The walls were
hung with Persian silks, and displayed three or four texts from the
Koran, beautifully written in gold on a green ground. Two small inlaid
tables stood near the divan, one at each end, and two deep English
easy-chairs, covered with red leather, were placed symmetrically
beside them. There was no other furniture, and there were no gimcracks
about, such as Europeans think necessary in an 'oriental' room.

With her plain black velvet, Lady Maud looked handsomer than ever in
the severely simple surroundings.

'Do you mind?' she asked, as Margaret sat down beside her. 'I'm afraid
I carried you off rather unceremoniously!'

'No,' Margaret answered. 'I'm glad to be quiet, it's so long since I
was at a dinner-party.'

'I've always hoped to meet you,' said Lady Maud, 'but you're quite
different from what I expected. I did not know you were really so
young--ever so much younger than I am.'

'Really?'

'Oh, yes! I'm seven-and-twenty, and I've been married four years.'

'I'm twenty-four,' said Margaret, 'and I'm not married yet.'

She was aware that the clear eyes were studying her face, but she did
not resent their scrutiny. There was something about her companion
that inspired her with trust at first sight, and she did not even
remember the impossible story Logotheti had told her.

'I suppose you are tormented by all sorts of people who ask things,
aren't you?'

Margaret wondered whether the beauty was going to ask her to sing for
nothing at a charity concert.

'I get a great many begging letters, and some very amusing ones,' she
answered cautiously. 'Young girls, of whom I never heard, write
and ask me to give them pianos and the means of getting a musical
education. I once took the trouble to have one of those requests
examined. It came from a gang of thieves in Chicago.'

Lady Maud smiled, but did not seem surprised.

'Millionaires get lots of letters of that sort,' she said. 'Think of
poor Mr. Van Torp!'

Margaret moved uneasily at the name, which seemed to pursue her since
she had left New York; but her present companion was the first person
who had applied to him the adjective 'poor.'

'Do you know him well?' she asked, by way of saying something.

Lady Maud was silent for a moment, and seemed to be considering the
question.

'I had not meant to speak of him,' she answered presently. 'I like
him, and from what you said at dinner I fancy that you don't, so we
shall never agree about him.'

'Perhaps not,' said Margaret. 'But I really could not have answered
that odious man's question in any other way, could I? I meant to
be quite truthful. Though I have met Mr. Van Torp often since last
Christmas, I cannot say that I know him very well, because I have not
seen the best side of him.'

'Few people ever do, and you have put it as fairly as possible. When
I first met him I thought he was a dreadful person, and now we're
awfully good friends. But I did not mean to talk about him!'

'I wish you would,' protested Margaret. 'I should like to hear the
other side of the case from some one who knows him well.'

'It would take all night to tell even what I know of his story,' said
Lady Maud. 'And as you've never seen me before you probably would not
believe me,' she added with philosophical calm. 'Why should you? The
other side of the case, as I know it, is that he is kind to me, and
good to people in trouble, and true to his friends.'

'You cannot say more than that of any man,' Margaret observed gravely.

'I could say much more, but I want to talk to you about other things.'

Margaret, who was attracted by her, and who was sure that the story
Logotheti had told was a fabrication, as he said it was, wished that
her new acquaintance would leave other matters alone and tell her what
she knew about Van Torp.

'It all comes of my having mentioned him accidentally,' said Lady
Maud. 'But I often do--probably because I think about him a good
deal.'

Margaret thought her amazingly frank, but nothing suggested itself in
the way of answer, so she remained silent.

'Did you know that your father and my father were friends at Oxford?'
Lady Maud asked, after a little pause.

'Really?' Margaret was surprised.

'When they were undergrads. Your name is Donne, isn't it? Margaret
Donne? My father was called Foxwell then. That's our name, you know.
He didn't come into the title till his uncle died, a few years ago.'

'But I remember a Mr. Foxwell when I was a child,' said Margaret. 'He
came to see us at Oxford sometimes. Do you mean to say that he was
your father?'

'Yes. He is alive, you know--tremendously alive!--and he remembers you
as a little girl, and wants me to bring you to see him. Do you mind
very much? I told him I was to meet you this evening.'

'I should be very glad indeed,' said Margaret.

'He would come to see you,' said Lady Maud, rather apologetically,
'but he sprained his ankle the other day. He was chivvying a cat
that was after the pheasants at Creedmore--he's absurdly young, you
know--and he came down at some hurdles.'

'I'm so sorry! Of course I shall be delighted to go.'

'It's awfully good of you, and he'll be ever so pleased. May I come
and fetch you? When? To-morrow afternoon about three? Are you quite
sure you don't mind?'

Margaret was quite sure; for the prospect of seeing an old friend of
her father's, and one whom she herself remembered well, was pleasant
just then. She was groping for something she had lost, and the merest
thread was worth following.

'If you like I'll sing for him,' she said.

'Oh, he simply hates music!' answered Lady Maud, with unconscious
indifference to the magnificence of such an offer from the greatest
lyric soprano alive.

Margaret laughed in spite of herself.

'Do you hate music too?' she asked.

'No, indeed! I could listen to you for ever. But my father is quite
different. I believe he hears half a note higher with one ear than
with the other. At all events the effect of music on him is dreadful.
He behaves like a cat in a thunderstorm. If you want to please him,
talk to him about old bindings. Next to shooting he likes bindings
better than anything in the world--in fact he's a capital bookbinder
himself.'

At this juncture Mustapha Pasha's pale and spiritual face appeared
between the curtains of the small room, and he interrupted the
conversation by a single word.

'Bridge?'

Lady Maud was on her feet in an instant.

'Rather!'

'Do you play?' asked the Ambassador, turning to Margaret, who rose
more slowly.

'Very badly. I would rather not.'

The diplomatist looked disappointed, and she noticed his expression,
and suspected that he would feel himself obliged to talk to her
instead of playing.

'I'm very fond of looking on,' she added quickly, 'if you will let me
sit beside you.'

They went back to the drawing-room, and presently the celebrated
Señorita da Cordova, who was more accustomed to being the centre of
interest than she realised, felt that she was nobody at all, as
she sat at her host's elbow watching the game through a cloud of
suffocating cigarette smoke. Even old Griggs, who detested cards,
had sacrificed himself in order to make up the second table. As for
Logotheti, he was too tactful to refuse a game in which every one knew
him to be a past master, in order to sit out and talk to her the whole
evening.

Margaret watched the players with some little interest at first. The
disagreeable Mr. Feist lost and became even more disagreeable, and
Margaret reflected that whatever he might be he was certainly not an
adventurer, for she had seen a good many of the class. The Ambassador
lost even more, but with the quiet indifference of a host who plays
because his guests like that form of amusement. Lady Maud and the
barrister were partners, and seemed to be winning a good deal; the
peer whose hobby was applied science revoked and did dreadful things
with his trumps, but nobody seemed to care in the least, except the
barrister, who was no respecter of persons, and had fought his way to
celebrity by terrorising juries and bullying the Bench.

At last Margaret let her head rest against the back of her comfortable
chair, and when she closed her eyes because the cigarette smoke made
them smart, she forgot to open them again, and went sound asleep; for
she was a healthy young person, and had eaten a good dinner, and on
evenings when she did not sing she was accustomed to go to bed at ten
o'clock, if not earlier.

No one even noticed that she was sleeping, and the game went on till
nearly midnight, when she was awakened by the sound of voices, and
sprang to her feet with the impression of having done something
terribly rude. Every one was standing, the smoke was as thick as ever,
and it was tempered by a smell of Scotch whisky. The men looked more
or less tired, but Lady Maud had not turned a hair.

The peer, holding a tall glass of weak whisky and soda in his hand,
and blinking through his gold-rimmed spectacles, asked her if she were
going anywhere else.

'There's nothing to go to yet,' she said rather regretfully.

'There are women's clubs,' suggested Logotheti.

'That's the objection to them,' answered the beauty with more sarcasm
than grammatical sequence.

'Bridge till all hours, though,' observed the barrister.

'I'd give something to spend an evening at a smart women's club,' said
the playwright in a musing tone. 'Is it true that the Crown Prince of
Persia got into the one in Mayfair as a waiter?'

'They don't have waiters,' said Lady Maud. 'Nothing is ever true. I
must be going home.'

Margaret was only too glad to go too. When they were downstairs she
heard a footman ask Lady Maud if he should call a hansom for her. He
evidently knew that she had no carriage.

'May I take you home?' Margaret asked.

'Oh, please do!' answered the beauty with alacrity. 'It's awfully good
of you!'

It was raining as the two handsome women got into the singer's
comfortable brougham.

'Isn't there room for me too?' asked Logotheti, putting his head in
before the footman could shut the door.

'Don't be such a baby,' answered Lady Maud in a displeased tone.

The Greek drew back with a laugh and put up his umbrella; Lady Maud
told the footman where to go, and the carriage drove away.

'You must have had a dull evening,' she said.

'I was sound asleep most of the time,' Margaret answered. 'I'm afraid
the Ambassador thought me very rude.'

'Because you went to sleep? I don't believe he even noticed it. And if
he did, why should you mind? Nobody cares what anybody does nowadays.
We've simplified life since the days of our fathers. We think more of
the big things than they did, and much less of the little ones.'

'All the same, I wish I had kept awake!'

'Nonsense!' retorted Lady Maud. 'What is the use of being famous if
you cannot go to sleep when you are sleepy? This is a bad world as
it is, but it would be intolerable if one had to keep up one's
school-room manners all one's life, and sit up straight and spell
properly, as if Society, with a big S, were a governess that could
send us to bed without our supper if we didn't!'

Margaret laughed a little, but there was no ripple in Lady Maud's
delicious voice as she made these singular statements. She was
profoundly in earnest.

'The public is my schoolmistress,' said Margaret. 'I'm so used to
being looked at and listened to on the stage that I feel as if people
were always watching me and criticising me, even when I go out to
dinner.'

'I've no right at all to give you my opinion, because I'm nobody in
particular,' answered Lady Maud, 'and you are tremendously famous and
all that! But you'll make yourself miserable for nothing if you get
into the way of caring about anybody's opinion of you, except on the
stage. And you'll end by making the other people uncomfortable too,
because you'll make them think that you mean to teach them manners!'

'Heaven forbid!' Margaret laughed again.

The carriage stopped, and Lady Maud thanked her, bade her good-night,
and got out.

'No,' she said, as the footman was going to ring the bell, 'I have a
latch-key, thank you.'

It was a small house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, and the
windows were quite dark. There was not even a light in the hall when
Margaret saw Lady Maud open the front door and disappear within.

Margaret went over the little incidents of the evening as she drove
home alone, and felt better satisfied with herself than she had been
since Lushington's visit, in spite of having deliberately gone to
sleep in Mustapha Pasha's drawing-room. No one had made her feel that
she was changed except for the better, and Lady Maud, who was most
undoubtedly a smart woman of the world, had taken a sudden fancy to
her. Margaret told herself that this would be impossible if she were
ever so little vulgarised by her stage life, and in this reflection
she consoled herself for what Lushington had said, and nursed her
resentment against him.

The small weaknesses of celebrities are sometimes amazing. There was a
moment that evening, as she stood before her huge looking-glass before
undressing and scrutinised her face in it, when she would have given
her fame and her fortune to be Lady Maud, who trusted to a passing
hansom or an acquaintance's carriage for getting home from an Embassy,
who let herself into a dark and cheerless little house with a
latch-key, who was said to be married to a slippery foreigner, and
about whom the gossips invented unedifying tales.

Margaret wondered whether Lady Maud would ever think of changing
places with her, to be a goddess for a few hours every week, to have
more money than she could spend on herself, and to be pursued with
requests for autographs and grand pianos, not to mention invitations
to supper from those supernal personages whose uneasy heads wear
crowns or itch for them; and Señorita da Cordova told herself rather
petulantly that Lady Maud would rather starve than be the most
successful soprano that ever trilled on the high A till the house
yelled with delight, and the royalties held up their stalking-glasses
to watch the fluttering of her throat, if perchance they might see how
the pretty noise was made.

But at this point Margaret Donne was a little ashamed of herself, and
went to bed; and she dreamt that Edmund Lushington had suddenly taken
to wearing a little moustache, very much turned up and flattened on
his cheeks, and a single emerald for a stud, which cast a greenish
refulgence round it upon a shirt-front that was hideously shiny;
and the effect of these changes in his appearance was to make him
perfectly odious.




CHAPTER VIII


Lord Creedmore had begun life as a poor barrister, with no particular
prospects, had entered the House of Commons early, and had been a
hard-working member of Parliament till he had inherited a title and a
relatively exiguous fortune when he was over fifty by the unexpected
death of his uncle and both the latter's sons within a year. He had
married young; his wife was the daughter of a Yorkshire country
gentleman, and had blessed him with ten children, who were all alive,
and of whom Lady Maud was not the youngest. He was always obliged to
make a little calculation to remember how old she was, and whether
she was the eighth or the ninth. There were three sons and seven
daughters. The sons were all in the army, and all stood between
six and seven feet in their stockings; the daughters were all
good-looking, but none was as handsome as Maud; they were all married,
and all but she had children. Lady Creedmore had been a beauty too,
but at the present time she was stout and gouty, had a bad temper, and
alternately soothed and irritated her complaint and her disposition by
following cures or committing imprudences. Her husband, who was now
over sixty, had never been ill a day in his life; he was as lean and
tough as a greyhound and as active as a schoolboy, a good rider, and a
crack shot.

His connection with this tale, apart from the friendship which grew
up between Margaret and Lady Maud, lies in the fact that his land
in Derbyshire adjoined the estate which Mr. Van Torp had bought and
re-named after himself. It was here that Lady Maud and the American
magnate had first met, two years after her marriage, when she had come
home on a long visit, very much disillusionised as to the supposed
advantages of the marriage bond as compared with the freedom of a
handsome English girl of three-and-twenty, who is liked in her set and
has the run of a score of big country houses without any chaperonial
encumbrance. For the chaperon is going down to the shadowy kingdom of
the extinct, and is already reckoned with dodos, stagecoaches, muzzle
loaders, crinolines, Southey's poems, the Thirty-nine Articles,
Benjamin Franklin's reputation, the British workman, and the late
Herbert Spencer's philosophy.

On the previous evening Lady Maud had not told Margaret that Lord
Creedmore lived in Surrey, having let his town house since his
youngest daughter had married. She now explained that it would be
absurd to think of driving such a distance when one could go almost
all the way by train. The singer was rather scared at the prospect of
possibly missing trains, waiting in draughty stations, and getting wet
by a shower; she was accustomed to think nothing of driving twenty
miles in a closed carriage to avoid the slightest risk of a wetting.

But Lady Maud piloted her safely, and showed an intimate knowledge
of the art of getting about by public conveyances which amazed her
companion. She seemed to know by instinct the difference between one
train and another, when all looked just alike, and when she had to
ask a question of a guard or a porter her inquiry was met with
business-like directness and brevity, and commanded the respect which
all officials feel for people who do not speak to them without a
really good reason--so different from their indulgent superiority when
we enter into friendly conversation with them.

The journey ended in a walk of a quarter of a mile from the station to
the gate of the small park in which the house stood. Lady Maud said
she was sorry she had forgotten to telephone for a trap to be sent
down, but added cheerfully that the walk would do Margaret good.

'You know your way wonderfully well,' Margaret said.

'Yes,' answered her companion carelessly. 'I don't think I could lose
myself in London, from Limehouse to Wormwood Scrubs.'

She spoke quite naturally, as if it were not in the least surprising
that a smart woman of the world should possess such knowledge.

'You must have a marvellous memory for places,' Margaret ventured to
say.

'Why? Because I know my way about? I walk a great deal, that's all.'

Margaret wondered whether the Countess Leven habitually took her walks
in the direction of Limehouse in the east or Shepherd's Bush in the
west; and if so, why? As for the distance, the thoroughbred looked
as if she could do twenty miles without turning a hair, and Margaret
wished she would not walk quite so fast, for, like all great singers,
she herself easily got out of breath if she was hurried; it was not
the distance that surprised her, however, but the fact that Lady Maud
should ever visit such regions.

They reached the house and found Lord Creedmore in the library, his
lame foot on a stool and covered up with a chudder. His clear brown
eyes examined Margaret's face attentively while he held her hand in
his.

'So you are little Margery,' he said at last, with a very friendly
smile. 'Do you remember me at all, my dear? I suppose I have changed
almost more than you have.'

Margaret remembered him very well indeed as Mr. Foxwell, who used
always to bring her certain particularly delicious chocolate wafers
whenever he came to see her father in Oxford. She sat down beside him
and looked at his face--clean-shaven, kindly, and energetic--the face
of a clever lawyer and yet of a keen sportsman, a type you will hardly
find out of England.

Lady Maud left the two alone after a few minutes, and Margaret found
herself talking of her childhood and her old home, as if nothing very
much worth mentioning had happened in her life during the last ten or
a dozen years. While she answered her new friend's questions and
asked others of him she unconsciously looked about the room. The
writing-table was not far from her, and she saw on it two photographs
in plain ebony frames; one was of her father, the other was a likeness
of Lady Maud. Little by little she understood that her father had been
Lord Creedmore's best friend from their schoolboy days till his death.
Yet although they had constantly exchanged short visits, the one
living in Oxford and the other chiefly in town, their wives had hardly
known each other, and their children had never met.

'Take him all in all,' said the old gentleman gravely, 'Donne was the
finest fellow I ever knew, and the only real friend I ever had.'

His eyes turned to the photograph on the table with a far-away manly
regret that went to Margaret's heart. Her father had been a reticent
man, and as there was no reason why he should have talked much about
his absent friend Foxwell, it was not surprising that Margaret should
never have known how close the tie was that bound them. But now,
coming unawares upon the recollection of that friendship in the man
who had survived, she felt herself drawn to him as if he were of
her own blood, and she thought she understood why she had liked his
daughter so much at first sight.

They talked for more than half an hour, and Margaret did not even
notice that he had not once alluded to her profession, and that she
had so far forgotten herself for the time as not to miss the usual
platitudes about her marvellous voice and her astoundingly successful
career.

'I hope you'll come and stop with us in Derbyshire in September,'
he said at last. 'I'm quite ashamed to ask you there, for we are
dreadfully dull people; but it would give us a great deal of
pleasure.'

'You are very kind indeed,' Margaret said. 'I should be delighted to
come.'

'Some of our neighbours might interest you,' said Lord Creedmore.
'There's Mr. Van Torp, for instance, the American millionaire. His
land joins mine.'

'Really?'

Margaret wondered if she should ever again go anywhere without hearing
of Mr. Van Torp.

'Yes. He bought Oxley Paddox some time ago and promptly re-christened
it Torp Towers. But he's not a bad fellow. Maud likes him, though Lady
Creedmore calls him names. He has such a nice little girl--at least,
it's not exactly his child, I believe,' his lordship ran on rather
hurriedly; 'but he's adopted her, I understand--at least, I fancy so.
At all events she was born deaf, poor little thing; but he has had her
taught to speak and to understand from the lips. Awfully pretty child!
Maud delights in her. Nice governess, too--I forget her name; but
she's a faithful sort of woman. It's a dreadfully hard position, don't
you know, to be a governess if you're young and good-looking, and
though Van Torp is rather a decent sort, I never feel quite sure--Maud
likes him immensely, it's true, and that is a good sign; but Maud is
utterly mad about a lot of things, and besides, she's singularly well
able to take care of herself.'

'Yes,' said Margaret; but she thought of the story Logotheti had told
her on the previous evening. 'I know Mr. Van Torp, and the little girl
and Miss More,' she said after a moment. 'We came over in the same
steamer.'

She thought it was only fair to say that she had met the people of
whom he had been speaking. There was no reason why Lord Creedmore
should be surprised by this, and he only nodded and smiled pleasantly.

'All the better. I shall set Maud on you to drag you down to
Derbyshire in September,' he said. 'Women never have anything to do in
September. Let me see--you're an actress, aren't you, my dear?'

Margaret laughed. It was positively delightful to feel that he had
never heard of her theatrical career.

'No; I'm a singer,' she said. 'My stage name is Cordova.'

'Oh yes, yes,' answered Lord Creedmore, very vaguely. 'It's the same
thing--you cannot possibly have anything to do in September, can you?'

'We shall see. I hope not, this year.'

'If it's not very indiscreet of me, as an old friend, you know, do you
manage to make a living by the stage?'

'Oh--fair!' Margaret almost laughed again.

Lady Maud returned at this juncture, and Margaret rose to go, feeling
that she had stayed long enough.

'Margery has half promised to come to us in September,' said Lord
Creedmore to his daughter, 'You don't mind if I call you Margery, do
you?' he asked, turning to Margaret. 'I cannot call you Miss Donne
since you really remember the chocolate wafers! You shall have some as
soon as I can go to see you!'

Margaret loved the name she had been called by as a child. Mrs.
Rushmore had severely eschewed diminutives.

'Margery,' repeated Lady Maud thoughtfully. 'I like the name awfully
well. Do you mind calling me Maud? We ought to have known each other
when we were in pinafores!'

In this way it happened that Margaret found herself unexpectedly
on something like intimate terms with her father's friend and the
latter's favourite child less than twenty-four hours after meeting
Lady Maud, and this was how she was asked to their place in the
country for the month of September. But that seemed very far away.

Lady Maud took Margaret home, as she had brought her, without making
her wait more than three minutes for a train, without exposing her to
a draught, and without letting her get wet, all of which would seem
easy enough to an old Londoner, but was marvellous in the eyes of the
young Primadonna, and conveyed to her an idea of freedom that was
quite new to her. She remembered that she used to be proud of her
independence when she first went into Paris from Versailles alone for
her singing lessons; but that trip, contrasted with the one from her
own house to Lord Creedmore's on the Surrey side, was like going out
for an hour's sail in a pleasure-boat on a summer's afternoon compared
with working a sea-going vessel safely through an intricate and
crowded channel at night.

Margaret noticed, too, that although Lady Maud was a very striking
figure, she was treated with respect in places where the singer knew
instinctively that if she herself had been alone she would have been
afraid that men would speak to her. She knew very well how to treat
them if they did, and was able to take care of herself if she chose
to travel alone; but she ran the risk of being annoyed where the
beautiful thoroughbred was in no danger at all. That was the
difference.

Lady Maud left her at her own door and went off on foot, though the
hansom that had brought them from the Baker Street Station was still
lurking near.

Margaret had told Logotheti to come and see her late in the afternoon,
and as she entered the hall she was surprised to hear voices upstairs.
She asked the servant who was waiting.

With infinite difficulty in the matter of pronunciation the man
informed her that the party consisted of Monsieur Logotheti, Herr
Schreiermeyer, Signor Stromboli, the Signorina Baci-Roventi, and
Fräulein Ottilie Braun. The four professionals had come at the very
moment when Logotheti had gained admittance on the ground that he had
an appointment, which was true, and they had refused to be sent away.
In fact, unless he had called the police the poor footman could not
have kept them out. The Signorina Baci-Roventi alone, black-browed,
muscular, and five feet ten in her shoes, would have been almost a
match for him alone; but she was backed by Signor Pompeo Stromboli,
who weighed fifteen stone in his fur coat, was as broad as he was
long, and had been seen to run off the stage with Madame Bonanni
in his arms while he yelled a high G that could have been heard in
Westminster if the doors had been open. Before the onslaught of such
terrific foreigners a superior London footman could only protest with
dignity and hold the door open for them to pass. Braver men than
he had quailed before Schreiermeyer's stony eye, and gentle little
Fräulein Ottilie slipped in like a swallow in the track of a storm.

Margaret felt suddenly inclined to shut herself up in her room
and send word that she had a headache and could not see them. But
Schreiermeyer was there. He would telephone for three doctors, and
would refuse to leave the house till they signed an assurance that she
was perfectly well and able to begin rehearsing the _Elisir d'Amore_
the next morning. That was what Schreiermeyer would do, and when she
next met him he would tell her that he would have 'no nonsense, no
stupid stuff,' and that she had signed an engagement and must sing or
pay.

She had never shammed an illness, either, and she did not mean to
begin now. It was only that for two blessed hours and more, with her
dead father's best friend and Maud, she had felt like her old self
again, and had dreamt that she was with her own people. She had even
disliked the prospect of seeing Logotheti after that, and she felt a
much stronger repugnance for her theatrical comrades. She went to her
own room before meeting them, and she sighed as she stood before the
tall looking-glass for a moment after taking off her coat and hat. In
pulling out the hat-pins her hair had almost come down, and Alphonsine
proposed to do it over again, but Margaret was impatient.

'Give me something--a veil, or anything,' she said impatiently. 'They
are waiting for me.'

The maid instantly produced from a near drawer a peach-coloured veil
embroidered with green and gold. It was a rather vivid modern Turkish
one given her by Logotheti, and she wrapped it quickly over her
disordered hair, like a sort of turban, tucking one end in, and
left the room almost without glancing at the glass again. She was
discontented with herself now for having dreamt of ever again being
anything but what she was--a professional singer.

The little party greeted her noisily as she entered the music-room.
Her comrades had not seen her since she had left them in New York, and
the consequence was that Signorina Baci-Roventi kissed her on both
cheeks with dramatic force, and she kissed Fräulein Ottilie on both
cheeks, and Pompeo Stromboli offered himself for a like favour and had
to be fought off, while Schreiermeyer looked on gravely, very much as
a keeper at the Zoo watches the gambols of the animals in his charge;
but Logotheti shook hands very quietly, well perceiving that his
chance of pleasing her just then lay in being profoundly respectful
while the professionals were overpoweringly familiar. His
almond-shaped eyes asked her how in the world she could stand it all,
and she felt uncomfortable at the thought that she was used to it.

Besides, these good people really liked her. The only members of the
profession who hated her were the other lyric sopranos. Schreiermeyer,
rapacious and glittering, had a photograph of her hideously enamelled
in colours inside the cover of his watch, and the facsimile of her
autograph was engraved across the lid of his silver cigarette-case.
Pompeo Stromboli carried some of her hair in a locket which he wore on
his chain between two amulets against the Evil Eye. Fräulein Ottilie
treasured a little water-colour sketch of her as Juliet on which
Margaret had written a few friendly words, and the Baci-Roventi
actually went to the length of asking her advice about the high notes
the contralto has to sing in such operas as _Semiramide_. It would be
hard to imagine a more sincere proof of affection and admiration than
this.

Margaret knew that the greeting was genuine and that she ought to be
pleased, but at the first moment the noise and the kissing and the
rough promiscuity of it all disgusted her.

Then she saw that all had brought her little presents, which were
arranged side by side on the piano, and she suddenly remembered that
it was her birthday. They were small things without value, intended
to make her laugh. Stromboli had sent to Italy for a Neapolitan clay
figure of a shepherd, cleverly modelled and painted, and vaguely
resembling himself--he had been a Calabrian goatherd. The contralto,
who came from Bologna, the city of sausages, gave Margaret a tiny pig
made of silver with holes in his back, in which were stuck a number of
quill toothpicks.

'You will think of me when you use them at table,' she said,
charmingly unconscious of English prejudices.

Schreiermeyer presented her with a bronze statuette of Shylock
whetting his knife upon his thigh.

'It will encourage you to sign our next agreement,' he observed
with stony calm. 'It is the symbol of business. We are all symbolic
nowadays.'

Fräulein Ottilie Braun had wrought a remarkable little specimen of
German sentiment. She had made a little blue pin-cushion and had
embroidered some little flowers on it in brown silk. Margaret had no
difficulty in looking pleased, but she also looked slightly puzzled.

'They are forget-me-nots,' said the Fräulein, 'but because my name is
Braun I made them brown. You see? So you will remember your little
Braun forget-me-not!'

Margaret laughed at the primitively simple little jest, but she was
touched too, and somehow she felt that her eyes were not quite dry
as she kissed the good little woman again. But Logotheti could not
understand at all, and thought it all extremely silly. He did not like
Margaret's improvised turban, either, though he recognised the veil as
one he had given her. The headdress was not classic, and he did not
think it becoming to the Victory of Samothrace.

He also had remembered her birthday and he had a small offering in
his pocket, but he could not give it to her before the others.
Schreiermeyer would probably insist on looking at it and would guess
its value, whereas Logotheti was sure that Margaret would not. He
would give it to her when they were alone, and would tell her that it
was nothing but a seal for her writing-case, a common green stone of
some kind with a little Greek head on it; and she would look at it and
think it pretty, and take it, because it did not look very valuable to
her unpractised eye. But the 'common green stone' was a great emerald,
and the 'little Greek head' was an intaglio of Anacreon, cut some two
thousand and odd hundred years ago by an art that is lost; and the
setting had been made and chiselled for Maria de' Medici when she
married Henry the Fourth of France. Logotheti liked to give Margaret
things vastly more rare than she guessed them to be.

Margaret offered her visitors tea, and she and Logotheti took theirs
while the others looked on or devoured the cake and bread and butter.

'Tea?' repeated Signor Stromboli. 'I am well. Why should I take tea?
The tea is for to perspire when I have a cold.'

The Signorina Baci-Roventi laughed at him.

'Do you not know that the English drink tea before dinner to give
themselves an appetite?' she asked. 'It is because they drink tea that
they eat so much.'

'All the more,' answered Stromboli. 'Do you not see that I am fat? Why
should I eat more? Am I to turn into a monument of Victor Emanuel?'

'You eat too much bread,' said Schreiermeyer in a resentful tone.

'It is my vice,' said the tenor, taking up four thin slices of bread
and butter together and popping them all into his mouth without the
least difficulty. 'When I see bread, I eat it. I eat all there is.'

'We see you do,' returned Schreiermeyer bitterly.

'I cannot help it. Why do they bring bread? They are in league to make
me fat. The waiters know me. I go into the Carlton; the head-waiter
whispers; a waiter brings a basket of bread; I eat it all. I go into
Boisin's, or Henry's; the head-waiter whispers; it is a basket of
bread; while I eat a few eggs, a chicken, a salad, a tart or two, some
fruit, cheese, the bread is all gone. I am the tomb of all the bread
in the world. So I get fat. There,' he concluded gravely, 'it is as I
tell you. I have eaten all.'

And in fact, while talking, he had punctuated each sentence with a
tiny slice or two of thin bread and butter, and everybody laughed,
except Schreiermeyer, as the huge singer gravely held up the empty
glass dish and showed it.

'What do you expect of me?' he asked. 'It is a vice, and I am not
Saint Anthony, to resist temptation.'

'Perhaps,' suggested Fräulein Ottilie timidly, 'if you exercised a
little strength of character--'

'Exercise?' roared Stromboli, not understanding her, for they spoke
a jargon of Italian, German, and English. 'Exercise? The more I
exercise, the more I eat! Ha, ha, ha! Exercise, indeed! You talk like
crazy!'

'You will end on wheels,' said Schreiermeyer with cold contempt. 'You
will stand on a little truck which will be moved about the stage from
below. You will be lifted to Juliet's balcony by a hydraulic crane.
But you shall pay for the machinery. Oh yes, oh yes! I will have it
in the contract! You shall be weighed. So much flesh to move, so much
money.'

'Shylock!' suggested Logotheti, glancing at the statuette and
laughing.

'Yes, Shylock and his five hundred pounds of flesh,' answered
Schreiermeyer, with a faint smile that disappeared again at once.

'But I meant character--' began Fräulein Ottilie, trying to go back
and get in a word.

'Character!' cried the Baci-Roventi with a deep note that made the
open piano vibrate. 'His stomach is his heart, and his character is
his appetite!'

She bent her heavy brows and fixed her gleaming black eyes on him with
a tragic expression.

'"Let them cant about decorum who have characters to lose,"' quoted
Logotheti softly.

This delicate banter went on for twenty minutes, very much to
Schreiermeyer's inward satisfaction, for it proved that at least four
members of his company were on good terms with him and with each
other; for when they had a grudge against him, real or imaginary, they
became sullen and silent in his presence, and eyed him with the coldly
ferocious expression of china dogs.

At last they all rose and went away in a body, leaving Margaret with
Logotheti.

'I had quite forgotten that it was my birthday,' she said, when they
were gone.

'I've brought you a little seal,' he answered, holding out the
intaglio.

She took it and looked at it.

'How pretty!' she exclaimed. 'It's awfully kind of you to have
remembered to-day, and I wanted a seal very much.'

'It's a silly little thing, just a head on some sort of green stone.
But I tried it on sealing-wax, and the impression is not so bad. I
shall be very happy if it's of any use, for I'm always puzzling my
brain to find something you may like.'

'Thanks very much. It's the thought I care for.' She laid the seal on
the table beside her empty cup. 'And now that we are alone,' she went
on, 'please tell me.'

'What?'

'How you found out what you told me at dinner last night.'

She leant back in the chair, raising her arms and joining her hands
above her head against the high top of the chair, and stretching
herself a little. The attitude threw the curving lines of her figure
into high relief, and was careless enough, but the tone in which she
spoke was almost one of command, and there was a sort of expectant
resentfulness in her eyes as they watched his face while she waited
for his answer. She believed that he had paid to have her watched by
some one who had bribed her servants.

'I did not find out anything,' he said quietly. 'I received an
anonymous letter from New York giving me all the details of the scene.
The letter was written with the evident intention of injuring Mr. Van
Torp. Whoever wrote it must have heard what you said to each other,
and perhaps he was watching you through the keyhole. It is barely
possible that by some accident he overheard the scene through the
local telephone, if there was one in the room. Should you care to see
that part of the letter which concerns you? It is not very delicately
worded!'

Margaret's expression had changed; she had dropped her hands and was
leaning forward, listening with interest.

'No,' she said, 'I don't care to see the letter, but who in the world
can have written it? You say it was meant to injure Mr. Van Torp--not
me.'

'Yes. There is nothing against you in it. On the contrary, the writer
calls attention to the fact that there never was a word breathed
against your reputation, in order to prove what an utter brute Van
Torp must be.'

'Tell me,' Margaret said, 'was that story about Lady Maud in the same
letter?'

'Oh dear, no! That is supposed to have happened the other day, but I
got the letter last winter.'

'When?'

'In January, I think.'

'He came to see me soon after New Year's Day,' said Margaret.' I wish
I knew who told--I really don't believe it was my maid.'

'I took the letter to one of those men who tell character by
handwriting,' answered Logotheti. 'I don't know whether you believe in
that, but I do a little. I got rather a queer result, considering that
I only showed half-a-dozen lines, which could not give any idea of the
contents.'

'What did the man say?'

'He said the writer appeared to be on the verge of insanity, if not
actually mad; that he was naturally of an accurate mind, with ordinary
business capacities, such as a clerk might have, but that he had
received a much better education than most clerks get, and must at one
time have done intellectual work. His madness, the man said, would
probably take some violent form.'

'There's nothing very definite about all that,' Margaret observed.
'Why in the world should the creature have written to you, of all
people, to destroy Mr. Van Torp's character?'

'The interview with you was only an incident,' answered Logotheti.
'There were other things, all tending to show that he is not a safe
person to deal with.'

'Why should you ever deal with him?'

Logotheti smiled.

'There are about a hundred and fifty men in different countries who
are regarded as the organs of the world's financial body. The very big
ones are the vital organs. Van Torp has grown so much of late that he
is probably one of them. Some people are good enough to think that I'm
another. The blood of the financial body--call it gold, or credit, or
anything you like--circulates through all the organs, and if one of
the great vital ones gets out of order the whole body is likely to
suffer. Suppose that Van Torp wished to do something with the Nickel
Trust in Paris, and that I had private information to the effect that
he was not a man to be trusted, and that I believed this information,
don't you see that I should naturally warn my friends against him, and
that our joint weight would be an effective obstacle in his way?'

'Yes, I see that. But, dear me! do you mean to say that all financiers
must be strictly virtuous, like little woolly white lambs?'

Margaret laughed carelessly. If Lushington had heard her, his teeth
would have been set on edge, but Logotheti did not notice the shade of
expression and tone.

'I repeat that the account of the interview with you was a mere
incident, thrown in to show that Van Torp occasionally loses his head
and behaves like a madman.'

'I don't want to see the letter,' said Margaret, 'but what sort of
accusations did it contain? Were they all of the same kind?'

'No. There was one other thing--something about a little girl called
Ida, who is supposed to be the daughter of that old Alvah Moon who
robbed your mother. You can guess the sort of thing the letter said
without my telling you.'

Margaret leaned forward and poked the small wood fire with a pair of
unnecessarily elaborate gilt tongs, and she nodded, for she remembered
how Lord Creedmore had mentioned the child that afternoon. He had
hesitated a little, and had then gone on speaking rather hurriedly.
She watched the sparks fly upward each time she touched the log, and
she nodded slowly.

'What are you thinking of?' asked Logotheti.

But she did not answer for nearly half a minute. She was reflecting on
a singular little fact which made itself clear to her just then. She
was certainly not a child; she was not even a very young girl, at
twenty-four; she had never been prudish, and she did not affect the
pre-Serpentine innocence of Eve before the fall. Yet it was suddenly
apparent to her that because she was a singer men treated her as if
she were a married woman, and would have done so if she had been
even five years younger. Talking to her as Margaret Donne, in Mrs.
Rushmore's house, two years earlier, Logotheti would not have
approached such a subject as little Ida Moon's possible relation to
Mr. Van Torp, because the Greek had been partly brought up in England
and had been taught what one might and might not say to a 'nice
English girl.' Margaret now reflected that since the day she had set
foot upon the stage of the Opera she had apparently ceased to be a
'nice English girl' in the eyes of men of the world. The profession of
singing in public, then, presupposed that the singer was no longer the
more or less imaginary young girl, the hothouse flower of the social
garden, whose perfect bloom the merest breath of worldly knowledge
must blight for ever. Margaret might smile at the myth, but she could
not ignore the fact that she was already as much detached from it in
men's eyes as if she had entered the married state. The mere fact of
realising that the hothouse blossom was part of the social legend
proved the change in herself.

'So that is the secret about the little girl,' she said at last. Then
she started a little, as if she had made a discovery. 'Good heavens!'
she exclaimed, poking the fire sharply. 'He cannot be as bad as
that--even he!'

'What do you mean?' asked Logotheti, surprised.

'No--really--it's too awful,' Margaret said slowly, to herself.
'Besides,' she added, 'one has no right to believe an anonymous
letter.'

'The writer was well informed about you, at least,' observed
Logotheti. 'You say that the details are true.'

'Absolutely. That makes the other thing all the more dreadful.'

'It's not such a frightful crime, after all,' Logotheti answered with
a little surprise. 'Long before he fell in love with you he may have
liked some one else! Such things may happen in every man's life.'

'That one thing--yes, no doubt. But you either don't know, or you
don't realise just what all the rest has been, up to the death of that
poor girl in the theatre in New York.'

'He was engaged to her, was he not?'

'Yes.'

'I forget who she was.'

'His partner's daughter. She was called Ida Bamberger.'

'Ida? Like the little girl?'

'Yes. Bamberger divorced his wife, and she married Senator Moon. Don't
you see?'

'And the girls were half-sisters--and--?' Logotheti stopped and
stared.

'Yes.' Margaret nodded slowly again and poked the fire.

'Good heavens!' The Greek knew something of the world's wickedness,
but his jaw dropped. 'Oedipus!' he ejaculated.

'It cannot be true,' Margaret said, quite in earnest. 'I detest him,
but I cannot believe that of him.'

For in her mind all that she knew and that Griggs had told her, and
that Logotheti did not know yet, rose up in orderly logic, and joined
what was now in her mind, completing the whole hideous tale of
wickedness that had ended in the death of Ida Bamberger, who had
been murdered, perhaps, in desperation to avert a crime even more
monstrous. The dying girl's faint voice came back to Margaret across
the ocean.

'He did it--'

And there was the stain on Paul Griggs' hand; and there was little
Ida's face on the steamer, when she had looked up and had seen Van
Torp's lips moving, and had understood what he was saying to himself,
and had dragged Margaret away in terror. And not least, there was the
indescribable fear of him which Margaret felt when he was near her for
a few minutes.

On the other side, what was there to be said for him? Miss More,
quiet, good, conscientious Miss More, devoting her life to the child,
said that he was one of the kindest men living. There was Lady Maud,
with her clear eyes, her fearless ways, and her knowledge of the world
and men, and she said that Van Torp was kind, and good to people in
trouble and true to his friends. Lord Creedmore, the intimate friend
of Margaret's father, a barrister half his life, and as keen as a
hawk, said that Mr. Van Torp was a very decent sort of man, and he
evidently allowed his daughter to like the American. It was true that
a scandalous tale about Lady Maud and the millionaire was already
going from mouth to mouth, but Margaret did not believe it. If she
had known that the facts were accurately told, whatever their meaning
might be, she would have taken them for further evidence against the
accused. As for Miss More, she was guided by her duty to her employer,
or her affection for little Ida, and she seemed to be of the
charitable sort, who think no evil; but after what Lord Creedmore had
said, Margaret had no doubt but that it was Mr. Van Torp who provided
for the child, and if she was his daughter, the reason for Senator
Moon's neglect of her was patent.

Then Margaret thought of Isidore Bamberger, the hard-working man of
business who was Van Torp's right hand and figure-head, as Griggs had
said, and who had divorced the beautiful, half-crazy mother of the two
Idas because Van Torp had stolen her from him--Van Torp, his partner,
and once his trusted friend. She remembered the other things Griggs
had told her: how old Bamberger must surely have discovered that his
daughter had been murdered, and that he meant to keep it a secret till
he caught the murderer. Even now the detectives might be on the right
scent, and if he whose child had been killed, and whose wife had been
stolen from him by the man he had once trusted, learnt the whole truth
at last, he would not be easily appeased.

'You have had some singular offers of marriage,' said Logotheti in a
tone of reflection. 'You will probably marry a beggar some day--a
nice beggar, who has ruined himself like a gentleman, but a beggar
nevertheless!'

'I don't know,' Margaret said carelessly. 'Of one thing I am sure. I
shall not marry Mr. Van Torp.'

Logotheti laughed softly.

'Remember the French proverb,' he said. '"Say not to the fountain, I
will not drink of thy water."'

'Proverbs,' returned Margaret, 'are what Schreiermeyer calls stupid
stuff. Fancy marrying that monster!'

'Yes,' assented Logotheti, 'fancy!'




CHAPTER IX


Three weeks later, when the days were lengthening quickly and London
was beginning to show its better side to the cross-grained people who
abuse its climate, the gas was lighted again in the dingy rooms in
Hare Court. No one but the old woman who came to sweep had visited
them since Mr. Van Torp had gone into the country in March, after Lady
Maud had been to see him on the evening of his arrival.

As then, the fire was laid in the grate, but the man in black who sat
in the shabby arm-chair had not put a match to the shavings, and the
bright copper kettle on the movable hob shone coldly in the raw glare
from the incandescent gaslight. The room was chilly, and the man had
not taken off his black overcoat or his hat, which had a broad band
on it. His black gloves lay on the table beside him. He wore patent
leather boots with black cloth tops, and he turned in his toes as he
sat. His aquiline features were naturally of the melancholic type, and
as he stared at the fireplace his expression was profoundly sad. He
did not move for a long time, but suddenly he trembled, as a man does
who feels the warning chill in a malarious country when the sun goes
down, and two large bright tears ran down his lean dark cheeks and
were quickly lost in his grizzled beard. Either he did not feel them,
or he would not take the trouble to dry them, for he sat quite still
and kept his eyes on the grate.

Outside it was quite dark and the air was thick, so that the
chimney-pots on the opposite roof were hardly visible against the
gloomy sky. It was the time of year when spring seems very near in
broad daylight, but as far away as in January when the sun goes down.

Mr. Isidore Bamberger was waiting for a visitor, as his partner Mr.
Van Torp had waited in the same place a month earlier, but he made no
preparations for a cheerful meeting, and the cheap japanned tea-caddy,
with the brown teapot and the chipped cups and saucers, stood
undisturbed in the old-fashioned cupboard in the corner, while the
lonely man sat before the cold fireplace and let the tears trickle
down his cheeks as they would.

At the double stroke of the spring door-bell, twice repeated, his
expression changed as if he had been waked from a dream. He dried his
cheeks roughly with the back of his hand, and his very heavy black
eyebrows were drawn down and together, as if the tension of the man's
whole nature had been relaxed and was now suddenly restored. The look
of sadness hardened to an expression that was melancholy still, but
grim and unforgiving, and the grizzled beard, clipped rather close at
the sides, betrayed the angles of the strong jaw as he set his teeth
and rose to let in his visitor. He was round-shouldered and slightly
bow-legged when he stood up; he was heavily and clumsily built, but he
was evidently strong.

He went out into the dark entry and opened the door, and a moment
later he came back with Mr. Feist, the man with the unhealthy
complexion whom Margaret had seen at the Turkish Embassy. Isidore
Bamberger sat down in the easy-chair again without ceremony, leaving
his guest to bring up a straight-backed chair for himself.

Mr. Feist was evidently in a very nervous condition. His hand shook
perceptibly as he mopped his forehead after sitting down, and he moved
his chair uneasily twice because the incandescent light irritated his
eyes. He did not wait for Bamberger to question him, however.

'It's all right,' he said, 'but he doesn't care to take steps till
after this season is over. He says the same thing will happen again to
a dead certainty, and that the more evidence he has the surer he'll be
of the decree. I think he's afraid Van Torp has some explanation up
his sleeve that will swing things the other way.'

'Didn't he catch her here?' asked the elder man, evidently annoyed.
'Didn't he find the money on this table in an envelope addressed
to her? Didn't he have two witnesses with him? Or is all that an
invention?'

'It happened just so. But he's afraid there's some explanation--'

'Feist,' said Isidore Bamberger slowly, 'find out what explanation the
man's afraid of, pretty quick, or I'll get somebody who will. It's my
belief that he's just a common coward, who takes money from his wife
and doesn't care how she gets it. I suppose she refused to pay one
day, so he strengthened his position by catching her; but he doesn't
want to divorce the goose that lays the golden egg as long as he's
short of cash. That's about the measure of it, you may depend.'

'She may be a goose,' answered Feist, 'but she's a wild one, and
she'll lead us a chase too. She's up to all sorts of games, I've
ascertained. She goes out of the house at all hours and comes home
when she's ready, and it isn't to meet your friend either, for he's
not been in London again since he landed.'

'Then who else is it?' asked Bamberger.

Feist smiled in a sickly way.

'Don't know,' he said. 'Can't find out.'

'I don't like people who don't know and can't find out,' answered the
other. 'I'm in a hurry, I tell you. I'm employing you, and paying you
a good salary, and taking a great deal of trouble to have you pushed
with letters of introduction where you can see her, and now you come
here and tell me you don't know and you can't find out. It won't do,
Feist. You're no better than you used to be when you were my secretary
last year. You're a pretty bright young fellow when you don't drink,
but when you do you're about as useful as a painted clock--and even a
painted clock is right twice in twenty-four hours. It's more than you
are. The only good thing about you is that you can hold your tongue,
drunk or sober. I admit that.'

Having relieved himself of this plain opinion Isidore Bamberger waited
to hear what Feist had to say, keeping his eyes fixed on the unhealthy
face.

'I've not been drinking lately, anyhow,' he answered, 'and I'll tell
you one thing, Mr. Bamberger, and that is, that I'm just as anxious as
you can be to see this thing through, every bit.'

'Well, then, don't waste time! I don't care a cent about the divorce,
except that it will bring the whole affair into publicity. As soon as
all the papers are down on him, I'll start in on the real thing. I
shall be ready by that time. I want public opinion on both sides of
the ocean to run strong against him, as it ought to, and it's just
that it should. If I don't manage that, he may get off in the end in
spite of your evidence.'

'Look here, Mr. Bamberger,' said Feist, waking up, 'if you want my
evidence, don't talk of dropping me as you did just now, or you won't
get it, do you understand? You've paid me the compliment of telling me
that I can hold my tongue. All right. But it won't suit you if I hold
my tongue in the witness-box, will it? That's all, Mr. Bamberger. I've
nothing more to say about that.'

There was a sudden vehemence in the young man's tone which portrayed
that in spite of his broken nerves he could still be violent. But
Isidore Bamberger was not the man to be brow-beaten by any one he
employed. He almost smiled when Feist stopped speaking.

'That's all right,' he said half good-naturedly and half
contemptuously. 'We understand each other. That's all right.'

'I hope it is,' Feist answered in a dogged way. 'I only wanted you to
know.'

'Well, I do, since you've told me. But you needn't get excited like
that. It's just as well you gave up studying medicine and took to
business, Feist, for you haven't got what they call a pleasant bedside
manner.'

Mr. Feist had once been a medical student, but had given up the
profession on inheriting a sum of money with which he at once began to
speculate. After various vicissitudes he had become Mr. Bamberger's
private secretary, and had held that position some time in spite of
his one failing, because he had certain qualities which made him
invaluable to his employer until his nerves began to give away. One of
those qualities was undoubtedly his power of holding his tongue
even when under the influence of drink; another was his really
extraordinary memory for details, and especially for letters he had
written under dictation, and for conversations he had heard. He was
skilful, too, in many ways when in full possession of his faculties;
but though Isidore Bamberger used him, he despised him profoundly,
as he despised every man who preferred present indulgence to future
profit.

Feist lit a cigarette and blew a vast cloud of smoke round him, but
made no answer to his employer's last observation.

'Now this is what I want you to do,' said the latter. 'Go to this
Count Leven and tell him it's a cash transaction or nothing, and that
he runs no risk. Find out what he'll really take, but don't come
talking to me about five thousand pounds or anything of that kind, for
that's ridiculous. Tell him that if proceedings are not begun by the
first of May his wife won't get any more money from Van Torp, and he
won't get any more from his wife. Use any other argument that strikes
you. That's your business, because that's what I pay you for. What I
want is the result, and that's justice and no more, and I don't care
anything about the means. Find them and I'll pay. If you can't find
them I'll pay somebody who can, and if nobody can I'll go to the end
without. Do you understand?'

'Oh, I understand right enough,' answered Feist, with his bad smile.'
If I can hit on the right scheme I won't ask you anything extra
for it, Mr. Bamberger! By the bye, I wrote you I met Cordova, the
Primadonna, at the Turkish Embassy, didn't I? She hates him as much
as the other woman likes him, yet she and the other have struck up a
friendship. I daresay I shall get something out of that too.'

'Why does Cordova hate him?' asked Bamberger.

'Don't quite know. Thought perhaps you might.'

'No.'

'He was attentive to her last winter,' Feist said. 'That's all I know
for certain. He's a brutal sort of man, and maybe he offended her
somehow.'

'Well,' returned Isidore Bamberger, 'maybe; but singers aren't often
offended by men who have money. At least, I've always understood so,
though I don't know much about that side of life myself.'

'It would be just one thing more to break his character if Cordova
would say something against him,' suggested Feist. 'Her popularity is
something tremendous, and people always believe a woman who says that
a man has insulted her. In those things the bare word of a pretty lady
who's no better than she should be is worth more than an honest man's
character for thirty years.'

'That's so,' said Bamberger, looking at him attentively. 'That's quite
true. Whatever you are, Feist, you're no fool. We may as well have the
pretty lady's bare word, anyway.'

'If you approve, I'm nearly sure I can get it,' Feist answered. 'At
least, I can get a statement which she won't deny if it's published
in the right way. I can furnish the materials for an article on her
that's sure to please her--born lady, never a word against her, highly
connected, unassailable private life, such a contrast to several other
celebrities on the stage, immensely charitable, half American, half
English--every bit of that all helps, you see--and then an anecdote or
two thrown in, and just the bare facts about her having had to escape
in a hurry from a prominent millionaire in a New York hotel--fairly
ran for her life and turned the key against him. Give his name if you
like. If he brings action for libel, you can subpoena Cordova herself.
She'll swear to it if it's true, and then you can unmask your big guns
and let him have it hot.'

'No doubt, no doubt. But how do you propose to find out if it is
true?'

'Well, I'll see; but it will answer almost as well if it's not true,'
said Feist cynically. 'People always believe those things.'

'It's only a detail,' said Bamberger, 'but it's worth something,
and if we can make this man Leven begin a suit against his wife,
everything that's against Van Torp will be against her too. That's not
justice, Feist, but it's fact. A woman gets considerably less pity for
making mistakes with a blackguard than for liking an honest man too
much, Feist.'

Mr. Bamberger, who had divorced his own wife, delivered these opinions
thoughtfully, and, though she had made no defence, he might be
supposed to know what he was talking about.

Presently he dismissed his visitor with final injunctions to lose no
time, and to 'find out' if Lady Maud was interested in any one besides
Van Torp, and if not, what was at the root of her eccentric hours.

Mr. Feist went away, apparently prepared to obey his employer with
all the energy he possessed. He went down the dimly-lighted stairs
quickly, but he glanced nervously upwards, as if he fancied that
Isidore Bamberger might have silently opened the door again to look
over the banister and watch him from above. In the dark entry below he
paused a moment, and took a satisfactory pull at a stout flask before
going out into the yellowish gloom that had settled on Hare Court.

When he was in the narrow alley he stopped again and laughed, without
making any sound, so heartily that he had to stand still till the fit
passed; and the expression of his unhealthy face just then would have
disturbed even Mr. Bamberger, who knew him well.

But Mr. Bamberger was sitting in the easy-chair before the fireplace,
and his eyes were fixed on the bright point at which the shiny copper
kettle reflected the gaslight. His head had fallen slightly forward,
so that his bearded chin was out of sight below the collar of his
overcoat, leaving his eagle nose and piercing eyes above it. He was
like a bird of prey looking down over the edge of its nest. He had not
taken off his hat for Mr. Feist, and it was pushed back from his bony
forehead now, giving his face a look that would have been half comic
if it had not been almost terrifying: a tall hat set on a skull, a
little back or on one side, produces just such an effect.

There was no moisture in the keen eyes now. In the bright spot on the
copper kettle they saw the vision of the end towards which he was
striving with all his strength, and all his heart, and all his wealth.
It was a grim little picture, and the chief figure in it was a
thick-set man who had a queer cap drawn down over his face and his
hands tied; and the eyes that saw it were sure that under the cap
there were the stony features of a man who had stolen his friend's
wife and killed his friend's daughter, and was going to die for what
he had done.

Then Isidore Bamberger's right hand disappeared inside the breast of
his coat and closed lovingly upon a full pocket-book; but there was
only a little money in it, only a few banknotes folded flat against
a thick package of sheets of notepaper all covered with clear, close
writing, some in ink and some in pencil; and if what was written there
was all true, it was enough to hang Mr. Rufus Van Torp.

There were other matters, too, not written there, but carefully
entered in the memory of the injured man. There was the story of his
marriage with a beautiful, penniless girl, not of his own faith, whom
he had taken in the face of strong opposition from his family. She
had been an exquisite creature, fair and ethereal, as degenerates
sometimes are; she had cynically married him for his money, deceiving
him easily enough, for he was willing to be blinded; but differences
had soon arisen between them, and had turned to open quarrelling, and
Mr. Van Torp had taken it upon himself to defend her and to reconcile
them, using the unlimited power his position gave him over his partner
to force the latter to submit to his wife's temper and caprice, as the
only alternative to ruin. Her friendship for Van Torp grew stronger,
till they spent many hours of every day together, while her husband
saw little of her, though he was never altogether estranged from her
so long as they lived under one roof.

But the time came at last when Bamberger had power too, and Van Torp
could no longer hold him in check with a threat that had become vain;
for he was more than indispensable, he was a part of the Nickel Trust,
he was the figure-head of the ship, and could not be discarded at
will, to be replaced by another.

As soon as he was sure of this and felt free to act, Isidore Bamberger
divorced his wife, in a State where slight grounds are sufficient. For
the sake of the Nickel Trust Van Torp's name was not mentioned. Mrs.
Bamberger made no defence, the affair was settled almost privately,
and Bamberger was convinced that she would soon marry Van Torp.
Instead, six weeks had not passed before she married Senator Moon,
a man whom her husband had supposed she scarcely knew, and to
Bamberger's amazement Van Torp's temper was not at all disturbed by
the marriage. He acted as if he had expected it, and though he hardly
ever saw her after that time, he exchanged letters with her during
nearly two years.

Bamberger's little daughter Ida had never been happy with her
beautiful mother, who had alternately spoilt her and vented her temper
on her, according to the caprice of the moment. At the time of the
divorce the child had been only ten years old; and as Bamberger was
very kind to her and was of an even disposition, though never very
cheerful, she had grown up to be extremely fond of him. She never
guessed that he did not love her in return, for though he was cynical
enough in matters of business, he was just according to his lights,
and he would not let her know that everything about her recalled her
mother, from her hair to her tone of voice, her growing caprices, and
her silly fits of temper. He could not believe in the affection of a
daughter who constantly reminded him of the hell in which he had
lived for years. If what Van Torp told Lady Maud of his own pretended
engagement to Ida was true, it was explicable only on that ground, so
far as her father was concerned. Bamberger felt no affection for
his daughter, and saw no reason why she should not be used as an
instrument, with her own consent, for consolidating the position of
the Nickel Trust.

As for the former Mrs. Bamberger, afterwards Mrs. Moon, she had gone
to Europe in the autumn, not many months after her marriage, leaving
the Senator in Washington, and had returned after nearly a year's
absence, bringing her husband a fine little girl, whom she had
christened Ida, like her first child, without consulting him. It soon
became apparent that the baby was totally deaf; and not very long
after this discovery, Mrs. Moon began to show signs of not being quite
sane. Three years later she was altogether out of her mind, and as
soon as this was clear the child was sent to the East to be taught.
The rest has already been told. Bamberger, of course, had never seen
little Ida, and had perhaps never heard of her existence, and Senator
Moon did not see her again before he died.

Bamberger had not loved his own daughter in her life, but since her
tragic death she had grown dear to him in memory, and he reproached
himself unjustly with having been cold and unkind to her. Below the
surface of his money-loving nature there was still the deep and
unsatisfied sentiment to which his wife had first appealed, and by
playing on which she had deceived him into marrying her. Her treatment
of him had not killed it, and the memory of his fair young daughter
now stirred it again. He accused himself of having misunderstood her.
What had been unreal and superficial in her mother had perhaps been
true and deep in her. He knew that she had loved him; he knew it now,
and it was the recollection of that one being who had been devoted to
him for himself, since he had been a grown man, that sometimes brought
the tears from his eyes when he was alone. It would have been a
comfort, now, to have loved her in return while she lived, and to have
trusted in her love then, instead of having been tormented by the
belief that she was as false as her mother had been.

But he had been disappointed of his heart's desire; for, strange as it
may seem to those who have not known such men as Isidore Bamberger,
his nature was profoundly domestic, and the ideal of his youth had
been to grow old in his own home, with a loving wife at his side,
surrounded by children and grandchildren who loved both himself and
her. Next to that, he had desired wealth and the power money gives;
but that had been first, until the hope of it was gone. Looking back
now, he was sure that it had all been destroyed from root to branch,
the hope and the possibility, and even the memory that might have
still comforted him, by Rufus Van Torp, upon whom he prayed that he
might live to be revenged. He sought no secret vengeance, either, no
pitfall of ruin dug in the dark for the man's untimely destruction;
all was to be in broad daylight, by the evidence of facts, under the
verdict of justice, and at the hands of the law itself.

It had not been very hard to get what he needed, for his former
secretary, Mr. Feist, had worked with as much industry and
intelligence as if the case had been his own, and in spite of the
vice that was killing him had shown a wonderful power of holding his
tongue. It is quite certain that up to the day when Feist called on
his employer in Hare Court, Mr. Van Torp believed himself perfectly
safe.




CHAPTER X


A fortnight later Count Leven informed his wife that he was going home
on a short leave, but that she might stay in London if she pleased. An
aunt of his had died in Warsaw, he said, leaving him a small property,
and in spite of the disturbed state of his own country it was
necessary that he should go and take possession of the land without
delay.

Lady Maud did not believe a word of what he said, until it became
apparent that he had the cash necessary for his journey without
borrowing of her, as he frequently tried to do, with varying success.
She smiled calmly as she bade him good-bye and wished him a pleasant
journey; he made a magnificent show of kissing her hand at parting,
and waved his hat to the window when he was outside the house, before
getting into the four-wheeler, on the roof of which his voluminous
luggage made a rather unsafe pyramid. She was not at the window, and
he knew it; but other people might be watching him from theirs, and
the servant stood at the open door. It was always worth while, in
Count Leven's opinion, to make an 'effect' if one got a chance.

Three days later Lady Maud received a document from the Russian
Embassy informing her that her husband had brought an action to obtain
a divorce from her in the Ecclesiastical Court of the Patriarch of
Constantinople, on the ground of her undue intimacy with Rufus Van
Torp of New York, as proved by the attested depositions of detectives.
She was further informed that unless she appeared in person or by
proxy before the Patriarch of Constantinople within one month of the
date of the present notice, to defend herself against the charges made
by her husband, judgment would go by default, and the divorce would be
pronounced.

At first Lady Maud imagined this extraordinary document to be a stupid
practical joke, invented by some half-fledged cousin to tease her.
She had a good many cousins, among whom were several beardless
undergraduates and callow subalterns in smart regiments, who would
think it no end of fun to scare 'Cousin Maud.' There was no mistaking
the official paper on which the document was written, and it bore
the seal of the Chancery of the Russian Embassy; but in Lady Maud's
opinion the mention of the Patriarch of Constantinople stamped it as
an egregious hoax.

On reflection, however, she decided that it must have been perpetrated
by some one in the Embassy for the express purpose of annoying her,
since no outsider could have got at the seal, even if he could have
obtained possession of the paper and envelope. As soon as this view
presented itself, she determined to ascertain the truth directly, and
to bring down the ambassadorial wrath on the offender.

Accordingly she took the paper to the Russian clerk who was in charge
of the Chancery, and inquired who had dared to concoct such a paper
and to send it to her.

To her stupefaction, the man smiled politely and informed her that the
document was genuine. What had the Patriarch to do with it? That was
very simple. Had she not been married to a Russian subject by the
Greek rite in Paris? Certainly. Very well. All marriages of Russian
subjects out of their own country took place under the authority of
the Patriarch of Constantinople, and all suits for divorcing persons
thus married came under his jurisdiction. That was all. It was such a
simple matter that every Russian knew all about it. The clerk asked
if he could be of service to her. He had been stationed in
Constantinople, and knew just what to do; and, moreover, he had a
friend at the Chancery there, who would take charge of the case if the
Countess desired it.

Lady Maud thanked him coldly, replaced the document in its envelope,
and left the Embassy with the intention of never setting foot in it
again.

She understood why Leven had suddenly lost an aunt of whom she had
never heard, and had got out of the way on pretence of an imaginary
inheritance. The dates showed plainly that the move had been prepared
before he left, and that he had started when the notice of the suit
was about to be sent to her. The only explanation that occurred to her
was that her husband had found some very rich woman who was willing to
marry him if he could free himself; and this seemed likely enough.

She hesitated as to how she should act. Her first impulse was to go
to her father, who was a lawyer and would give her good advice, but a
moment's thought showed her that it would be a mistake to go to him.
Being no longer immobilised by a sprained ankle, Lord Creedmore would
probably leave England instantly in pursuit of Leven himself, and no
one could tell what the consequences might be if he caught him; they
would certainly be violent, and they might be disastrous.

Then Lady Maud thought of telegraphing to Mr. Van Torp to come to town
to see her about an urgent matter; but she decided against that course
too. Whatever her relations were with the American financier this was
not the moment to call attention to them. She would write to him, and
in order to see him conveniently she would suggest to her father to
have a week-end house party in the country, and to ask his neighbour
over from Oxley Paddox. Nobody but Mr. Van Torp and the post-office
called the place Torp Towers.

She had taken a hansom to the Embassy, but she walked back to Charles
Street because she was angry, and she considered nothing so good for a
rage as a stiff walk. By the time she reached her own door she was as
cool as ever, and her clear eyes looked upon the wicked world with
their accustomed calm.

As she laid her hand on the door-bell, a smart brougham drove up
quickly and stopped close to the pavement, and as she turned her head
Margaret was letting herself out, before the footman could get round
from the other side to open the door of the carriage.

'May I come in?' asked the singer anxiously, and Lady Maud saw that
she seemed much disturbed, and had a newspaper in her hand. 'I'm so
glad I just caught you,' Margaret added, as the door opened.

They went in together. The house was very small and narrow, and Lady
Maud led the way into a little sitting-room on the right of the hall,
and shut the door.

'Is it true?' Margaret asked as soon as they were alone.

'What?'

'About your divorce--'

Lady Maud smiled rather contemptuously.

'Is it already in the papers?' she asked, glancing at the one Margaret
had brought. 'I only heard of it myself an hour ago!'

'Then it's really true! There's a horrid article about it--'

Margaret was evidently much more disturbed than her friend, who sat
down in a careless attitude and smiled at her.

'It had to come some day. And besides,' added Lady Maud, 'I don't
care!'

'There's something about me too,' answered Margaret, 'and I cannot
help caring.'

'About you?'

'Me and Mr. Van Torp--the article is written by some one who hates
him--that's clear!--and you know I don't like him; but that's no
reason why I should be dragged in.'

She was rather incoherent, and Lady Maud took the paper from her hand
quietly, and found the article at once. It was as 'horrid' as the
Primadonna said it was. No names were given in full, but there could
not be the slightest mistake about the persons referred to, who were
all clearly labelled by bits of characteristic description. It was all
in the ponderously airy form of one of those more or less true stories
of which some modern weeklies seem to have an inexhaustible supply,
but it was a particularly vicious specimen of its class so far as
Mr. Van Torp was concerned. His life was torn up by the roots and
mercilessly pulled to pieces, and he was shown to the public as a
Leicester Square Lovelace or a Bowery Don Juan. His baleful career was
traced from his supposed affair with Mrs. Isidore Bamberger and her
divorce to the scene at Margaret's hotel in New York, and from that
to the occasion of his being caught with Lady Maud in Hare Court by a
justly angry husband; and there was, moreover, a pretty plain allusion
to little Ida Moon.

Lady Maud read the article quickly, but without betraying any emotion.
When she had finished she raised her eyebrows a very little, and gave
the paper back to Margaret.

'It is rather nasty,' she observed quietly, as if she were speaking of
the weather.

'It's utterly disgusting,' Margaret answered with emphasis. 'What
shall you do?'

'I really don't know. Why should I do anything? Your position is
different, for you can write to the papers and deny all that concerns
you if you like--though I'm sure I don't know why you should care.
It's not to your discredit.'

'I could not very well deny it,' said the Primadonna thoughtfully.
Almost before the words had left her lips she was sorry she had
spoken.

'Does it happen to be true?' asked Lady Maud, with an encouraging
smile.

'Well, since you ask me--yes.' Margaret felt uncomfortable.

'Oh, I thought it might be,' answered Lady Maud. 'With all his good
qualities he has a very rough side. The story about me is perfectly
true too.'

Margaret was amazed at her friend's quiet cynicism.

'Not that about the--the envelope on the table--'

She stopped short.

'Oh yes! There were four thousand one hundred pounds in it. My husband
counted the notes.'

The singer leaned back in her chair and stared in unconcealed
surprise, wondering how in the world she could have been so completely
mistaken in her judgment of a friend who had seemed to her the best
type of an honest and fearless Englishwoman. Margaret Donne had not
been brought up in the gay world; she had, however, seen some aspects
of it since she had been a successful singer, and she did not
exaggerate its virtues; but somehow Lady Maud had seemed to be above
it, while living in it, and Margaret would have put her hand into the
fire for the daughter of her father's old friend, who now acknowledged
without a blush that she had taken four thousand pounds from Rufus Van
Torp.

'I suppose it would go against me even in an English court,' said Lady
Maud in a tone of reflection. 'It looks so badly to take money, you
know, doesn't it? But if I must be divorced, it really strikes me
as delightfully original to have it done by the Patriarch of
Constantinople! Doesn't it, my dear?'

'It's not usual, certainly,' said Margaret gravely.

She was puzzled by the other's attitude, and somewhat horrified.

'I suppose you think I'm a very odd sort of person,' said Lady Maud,
'because I don't mind so much as most women might. You see, I never
really cared for Leven, though if I had not thought I had a fancy for
him I wouldn't have married him. My people were quite against it. The
truth is, I couldn't have the husband I wanted, and as I did not mean
to break my heart about it, I married, as so many girls do. That's my
little story! It's not long, is it?'

She laughed, but she very rarely did that, even when she was amused,
and now Margaret's quick ear detected here and there in the sweet
ripple a note that did not ring quite like the rest. The intonation
was not false or artificial, but only sad and regretful, as genuine
laughter should not be. Margaret looked at her, still profoundly
mystified, and still drawn to her by natural sympathy, though
horrified almost to disgust at what seemed her brutal cynicism.

'May I ask one question? We've grown to be such good friends that
perhaps you won't mind.'

Lady Maud nodded.

'Of course,' she said. 'Ask me anything you please. I'll answer if I
can.'

'You said that you could not marry the man you liked. Was he--Mr. Van
Torp?'

Lady Maud was not prepared for the question.

'Mr. Van Torp?' she repeated slowly. 'Oh dear no! Certainly not! What
an extraordinary idea!' She gazed into Margaret's eyes with a look of
inquiry, until the truth suddenly dawned upon her. 'Oh, I see!' she
cried. 'How awfully funny!'

There was no minor note of sadness or regret in her rippling laughter
now. It was so exquisitely true and musical that the great soprano
listened to it with keen delight, and wondered whether she herself
could produce a sound half so delicious.

'No, my dear,' said Lady Maud, as her mirth subsided. 'I never was in
love with Mr. Van Torp. But it really is awfully funny that you should
have thought so! No wonder you looked grave when I told you that I was
really found in his rooms! We are the greatest friends, and no man was
ever kinder to a woman than he has been to me for the last two years.
But that's all. Did you really think the money was meant for me? That
wasn't quite nice of you, was it?'

The bright smile was still on her face as she spoke the last words,
for her nature was far too big to be really hurt; but the little
rebuke went home sharply, and Margaret felt unreasonably ashamed of
herself, considering that Lady Maud had not taken the slightest pains
to explain the truth to her.

'I'm so sorry,' she said contritely. 'I'm dreadfully sorry. It was
abominably stupid of me!'

'Oh no. It was quite natural. This is not a pretty world, and there's
no reason why you should think me better than lots of other women. And
besides, I don't care!'

'But surely you won't let your husband get a divorce for such a reason
as that without making a defence?'

'Before the Patriarch of Constantinople?' Lady Maud evidently thought
the idea very amusing. 'It sounds like a comic opera,' she added. 'Why
should I defend myself? I shall be glad to be free; and as for the
story, the people who like me will not believe any harm of me, and the
people who don't like me may believe what they please. But I'm very
glad you showed me that article, disgusting as it is.'

'I was beginning to be sorry I had brought it.'

'No. You did me a service, for I had no idea that any one was going to
take advantage of my divorce to make a cowardly attack on my friend--I
mean Mr. Van Torp. I shall certainly not make any defence before the
Patriarch, but I shall make a statement which will go to the right
people, saying that I met Mr. Van Torp in a lawyer's chambers in
the Temple, that is, in a place of business, and about a matter of
business, and that there was no secret about it, because my husband's
servant called the cab that took me there, and gave the cabman the
address. I often do go out without telling any one, and I let myself
in with a latch-key when I come home, but on that particular occasion
I did neither. Will you say that if you hear me talked about?'

'Of course I will.'

Nevertheless, Margaret thought that Lady Maud might have given her a
little information about the 'matter of business' which had
involved such a large sum of money, and had produced such important
consequences.




CHAPTER XI


Mr. Van Torp was walking slowly down the Elm Walk in the park at Oxley
Paddox. The ancient trees were not in full leaf yet, but there were
myriads of tiny green feather points all over the rough brown branches
and the smoother twigs, and their soft colour tinted the luminous
spring air. High overhead all sorts and conditions of little birds
were chirping and trilling and chattering together and by turns, and
on the ground the sparrows were excessively busy and talkative, while
the squirrels made wild dashes across the open, and stopped suddenly
to sit bolt upright and look about them, and then dashed on again.

Little Ida walked beside the millionaire in silence, trustfully
holding one of his hands, and as she watched the sparrows she tried
to make out what sort of sound they could be making when they hopped
forward and opened their bills so wide that she could distinctly see
their little tongues. Mr. Van Torp's other hand held a newspaper, and
he was reading the article about himself which Margaret had shown to
Lady Maud. He did not take that particular paper, but a marked copy
had been sent to him, and in due course had been ironed and laid on
the breakfast-table with those that came regularly. The article was
marked in red pencil.

He read it slowly with a perfectly blank expression, as if it
concerned some one he did not know. Once only, when he came upon
the allusion to the little girl, his eyes left the page and glanced
quietly down at the large red felt hat with its knot of ribbands
that moved along beside him, and hid all the child's face except the
delicate chin and the corner of the pathetic little mouth. She did not
know that he looked down at her, for she was intent on the sparrows,
and he went back to the article and read to the end.

Then, in order to fold the paper, he gently let go of Ida's hand, and
she looked up into his face. He did not speak, but his lips moved
a little as he doubled the sheet to put it into his pocket; and
instantly the child's expression changed, and she looked hurt and
frightened, and stretched up her hand quickly to cover his mouth, as
if to hide the words his lips were silently forming.

'Please, please!' she said, in her slightly monotonous voice. 'You
promised me you wouldn't any more!'

'Quite right, my dear,' answered Mr. Van Torp, smiling, 'and I
apologise. You must make me pay a forfeit every time I do it. What
shall the forfeit be? Chocolates?'

She watched his lips, and understood as well as if she had heard.

'No,' she answered demurely. 'You mustn't laugh. When I've done
anything wicked and am sorry, I say the little prayer Miss More taught
me. Perhaps you'd better learn it too.'

'If you said it for me,' suggested Mr. Van Torp gravely, 'it would be
more likely to work.'

'Oh no! That wouldn't do at all! You must say it for yourself. I'll
teach it to you if you like. Shall I?'

'What must I say?' asked the financier.

'Well, it's made up for me, you see, and besides, I've shortened it a
wee bit. What I say is: "Dear God, please forgive me this time, and
make me never want to do it again. Amen." Can you remember that, do
you think?'

'I think I could,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'Please forgive me and make me
never do it again.'

'Never want to do it again,' corrected little Ida with emphasis. 'You
must try not even to want to say dreadful things. And then you must
say "Amen." That's important.'

'Amen,' repeated the millionaire.

At this juncture the discordant toot of an approaching motor-car was
heard above the singing of the birds. Mr. Van Torp turned his
head quickly in the direction of the sound, and at the same time
instinctively led the little girl towards one side of the road. She
apparently understood, for she asked no questions. There was a turn in
the drive a couple of hundred yards away, where the Elm Walk ended,
and an instant later an enormous white motor-car whizzed into sight,
rushed furiously towards the two, and was brought to a standstill in
an uncommonly short time, close beside them. An active man, in the
usual driver's disguise of the modern motorist, jumped down, and at
the same instant pushed his goggles up over the visor of his cap
and loosened the collar of his wide coat, displaying the face of
Constantino Logotheti.

'Oh, it's you, is it?' Mr. Van Torp asked the wholly superfluous
question in a displeased tone. 'How did you get in? I've given
particular orders to let in no automobiles.'

'I always get in everywhere,' answered Logotheti coolly. 'May I see
you alone for a few minutes?'

'If it's business, you'd better see Mr. Bamberger,' said Van Torp.
'I came here for a rest. Mr. Bamberger has come over for a few days.
You'll find him at his chambers in Hare Court.'

'No,' returned Logotheti, 'it's a private matter. I shall not keep you
long.'

'Then run us up to the house in your new go-cart.'

Mr. Van Torp lifted little Ida into the motor as if she had been a
rather fragile china doll instead of a girl nine years old and quite
able to get up alone, and before she could sit down he was beside her.
Logotheti jumped up beside the chauffeur and the machine ran up the
drive at breakneck speed. Two minutes later they all got out more than
a mile farther on, at the door of the big old house. Ida ran away to
find Miss More; the two men entered together, and went into the study.

The room had been built in the time of Edward Sixth, had been
decorated afresh under Charles the Second, the furniture was of the
time of Queen Anne, and the carpet was a modern Turkish one, woven
in colours as fresh as paint to fit the room, and as thick as a down
quilt: it was the sort of carpet which has come into existence with
the modern hotel.

'Well?' Mr. Van Torp uttered the monosyllable as he sat down in his
own chair and pointed to a much less comfortable one, which Logotheti
took.

'There's an article about you,' said the latter, producing a paper.

'I've read it,' answered Mr. Van Torp in a tone of stony indifference.

'I thought that was likely. Do you take the paper?'

'No. Do you?'

'No, it was sent to me,' Logotheti answered. 'Did you happen to glance
at the address on the wrapper of the one that came to you?'

'My valet opens all the papers and irons them.'

Mr. Van Torp looked very bored as he said this, and he stared stonily
at the pink and green waistcoat which his visitor's unfastened coat
exposed to view. Hundreds of little gold beads were sewn upon it at
the intersections of the pattern. It was a marvellous creation.

'I had seen the handwriting on the one addressed to me before,'
Logotheti said.

'Oh, you had, had you?'

Mr. Van Torp asked the question in a dull tone without the slightest
apparent interest in the answer.

'Yes,' Logotheti replied, not paying any attention to his host's
indifference. 'I received an anonymous letter last winter, and the
writing of the address was the same.'

'It was, was it?'

The millionaire's tone did not change in the least, and he continued
to admire the waistcoat. His manner might have disconcerted a person
of less assurance than the Greek, but in the matter of nerves the two
financiers were well matched.

'Yes,' Logotheti answered, 'and the anonymous letter was about you,
and contained some of the stories that are printed in this article.'

'Oh, it did, did it?'

'Yes. There was an account of your interview with the Primadonna at a
hotel in New York. I remember that particularly well.'

'Oh, you do, do you?'

'Yes. The identity of the handwriting and the similarity of the
wording make it look as if the article and the letter had been written
by the same person.'

'Well, suppose they were--I don't see anything funny about that.'

Thereupon Mr. Van Torp turned at last from the contemplation of the
waistcoat and looked out of the bay-window at the distant trees, as if
he were excessively weary of Logotheti's talk.

'It occurred to me,' said the latter, 'that you might like to stop any
further allusions to Miss Donne, and that if you happened to recognize
the handwriting you might be able to do so effectually.'

'There's nothing against Madame Cordova in the article,' answered Mr.
Van Torp, and his aggressive blue eyes turned sharply to his visitor's
almond-shaped brown ones. 'You can't say there's a word against her.'

'There may be in the next one,' suggested Logotheti, meeting the look
without emotion. 'When people send anonymous letters about broadcast
to injure men like you and me, they are not likely to stick at such a
matter as a woman's reputation.'

'Well--maybe not.' Mr. Van Torp turned his sharp eyes elsewhere. 'You
seem to take quite an interest in Madame Cordova, Mr. Logotheti,' he
observed, in an indifferent tone.

'I knew her before she went on the stage, and I think I may call
myself a friend of hers. At all events, I wish to spare her any
annoyance from the papers if I can, and if you have any regard for her
you will help me, I'm sure.'

'I have the highest regard for Madame Cordova,' said Mr. Van Torp, and
there was a perceptible change in his tone; 'but after this, I guess
the best way I can show it is to keep out of her track. That's about
all there is to do. You don't suppose I'm going to bring an action
against that paper, do you?'

'Hardly!' Logotheti smiled.

'Well, then, what do you expect me to do, Mr. Logotheti?'

Again the eyes of the two men met.

'I'll tell you,' answered the Greek. 'The story about your visit to
Miss Donne in New York is perfectly true.'

'You're pretty frank,' observed the American.

'Yes, I am. Very good. The man who wrote the letter and the article
knows you, and that probably means that you have known him, though you
may never have taken any notice of him. He hates you, for some reason,
and means to injure you if he can. Just take the trouble to find out
who he is and suppress him, will you? If you don't, he will throw more
mud at honest women. He is probably some underling whose feelings you
have hurt, or who has lost money by you, or both.'

'There's something in that,' answered Mr. Van Torp, showing a little
more interest. 'Do you happen to have any of his writing about you?
I'll look at it.'

Logotheti took a letter and a torn piece of brown paper from his
pocket and handed both to his companion.

'Read the letter, if you like,' he said. 'The handwriting seems to be
the same as that on the wrapper.'

Mr. Van Torp first compared the address, and then proceeded to read
the anonymous letter. Logotheti watched his face quietly, but it did
not change in the least. When he had finished, he folded the sheet,
replaced it in the envelope, and returned it with the bit of paper.

'Much obliged,' he said, and he looked out of the window again and was
silent.

Logotheti leaned back in his chair as he put the papers into his
pocket again, and presently, as Mr. Van Torp did not seem inclined to
say anything more, he rose to go. The American did not move, and still
looked out of the window.

'You originally belonged to the East, Mr. Logotheti, didn't you?' he
asked suddenly.

'Yes. I'm a Greek and a Turkish subject.'

'Do you happen to know the Patriarch of Constantinople?'

Logotheti stared in surprise, taken off his guard for once.

'Very well indeed,' he answered after an instant. 'He is my uncle.'

'Why, now, that's quite interesting!' observed Mr. Van Torp, rising
deliberately and thrusting his hands into his pockets.

Logotheti, who knew nothing about the details of Lady Maud's pending
divorce, could not imagine what the American was driving at, and
waited for more. Mr. Van Torp began to walk up and down, with his
rather clumsy gait, digging his heels into vivid depths of the new
Smyrna carpet at every step.

'I wasn't going to tell you,' he said at last, 'but I may just as
well. Most of the accusations in that letter are lies. I didn't blow
up the subway. I know it was done on purpose, of course, but I had
nothing to do with it, and any man who says I had, takes me for a
fool, which you'll probably allow I'm not. You're a man of business,
Mr. Logotheti. There had been a fall in Nickel, and for weeks before
the explosion I'd been making a considerable personal sacrifice to
steady things. Now you know as well as I do that all big accidents
are bad for the market when it's shaky. Do you suppose I'd have
deliberately produced one just then? Besides, I'm not a criminal. I
didn't blow up the subway any more than I blew up the Maine to bring
on the Cuban war! The man's a fool.'

'I quite agree with you,' said the Greek, listening with interest.

'Then there's another thing. That about poor Mrs. Moon, who's gone
out of her mind. It's nonsense to say I was the reason of Bamberger's
divorcing his wife. In the first place, there are the records of the
divorce, and my name was never mentioned. I was her friend, that's
all, and Bamberger resented it--he's a resentful sort of man anyway.
He thought she'd marry me as soon as he got the divorce. Well, she
didn't. She married old Alvah Moon, who was the only man she ever
cared for. The Lord knows how it was, but that wicked old scarecrow
made all the women love him, to his dying day. I had a high regard for
Mrs. Bamberger, and I suppose she was right to marry him if she liked
him. Well, she married him in too much of a hurry, and the child that
was born abroad was Bamberger's and not his, and when he found it out
he sent the girl East and would never see her again, and didn't leave
her a cent when he died. That's the truth about that, Mr. Logotheti. I
tell you because you've got that letter in your pocket, and I'd rather
have your good word than your bad word in business any day.'

'Thank you,' answered Logotheti. 'I'm glad to know the facts in the
case, though I never could see what a man's private life can have to
do with his reputation in the money market!'

'Well, it has, in some countries. Different kinds of cats have
different kinds of ways. There's one thing more, but it's not in the
letter, it's in the article. That's about Countess Leven, and it's the
worst lie of the lot, for there's not a better woman than she is from
here to China. I'm not at liberty to tell you anything of the matter
she's interested in and on which she consults me. But her father is
my next neighbour here, and I seem to be welcome at his house; he's a
pretty sensible man, and that makes for her, it seems to me. As for
that husband of hers, we've a good name in America for men like him.
We'd call him a skunk over there. I suppose the English word is
polecat, but it doesn't say as much. I don't think there's anything
else I want to tell you.'

'You spoke of my uncle, the Patriarch,' observed Logotheti.

'Did I? Yes. Well, what sort of a gentleman is he, anyway?'

The question seemed rather vague to the Greek.

'How do you mean?' he inquired, buttoning his coat over the wonderful
waistcoat.

'Is he a friendly kind of a person, I mean? Obliging, if you take him
the right way? That's what I mean. Or does he get on his ear right
away?'

'I should say,' answered Logotheti, without a smile, 'that he gets on
his ear right away--if that means the opposite of being friendly and
obliging. But I may be prejudiced, for he does not approve of me.'

'Why not, Mr. Logotheti?'

'My uncle says I'm a pagan, and worship idols.'

'Maybe he means the Golden Calf,' suggested Mr. Van Torp gravely.

Logotheti laughed.

'The other deity in business is the Brazen Serpent, I believe,' he
retorted.

'The two would look pretty well out there on my lawn,' answered Mr.
Van Torp, his hard face relaxing a little.

'To return to the point. Can I be of any use to you with the
Patriarch? We are not on bad terms, though he does think me a heathen.
Is there anything I can do?'

'Thank you, not at present. Much obliged. I only wanted to know.'

Logotheti's curiosity was destined to remain unsatisfied. He refused
Mr. Van Torp's not very pressing invitation to stay to luncheon, given
at the very moment when he was getting into his motor, and a few
seconds later he was tearing down the avenue.

Mr. Van Torp stood on the steps till he was out of sight and then came
down himself and strolled slowly away towards the trees again, his
hands behind him and his eyes constantly bent upon the road, three
paces ahead.

He was not always quite truthful. Scruples were not continually
uppermost in his mind. For instance, what he had told Lady Maud about
his engagement to poor Miss Bamberger did not quite agree with what he
had said to Margaret on the steamer.

In certain markets in New York, three kinds of eggs are offered for
sale, namely, Eggs, Fresh Eggs, and Strictly Fresh Eggs. I have seen
the advertisement. Similarly in Mr. Van Torp's opinion there were
three sorts of stories, to wit, Stories, True Stories, and Strictly
True Stories. Clearly, each account of his engagement must have
belonged to one of these classes, as well as the general statement he
had made to Logotheti about the charges brought against him in the
anonymous letter. The reason why he had made that statement was plain
enough; he meant it to be repeated to Margaret because he really
wished her to think well of him. Moreover, he had recognised the
handwriting at once as that of Mr. Feist, Isidore Bamberger's former
secretary, who knew a good many things and might turn out a dangerous
enemy.

But Logotheti, who knew something of men, and had dealt with some
very accomplished experts in fraud from New York and London to
Constantinople, had his doubts about the truth of what he had heard,
and understood at once why the usually reticent American had talked
so much about himself. Van Torp, he was sure, was in love with the
singer; that was his weak side, and in whatever affected her he might
behave like a brute or a baby, but would certainly act with something
like rudimentary simplicity in either case. In Logotheti's opinion
Northern and English-speaking men might be as profound as Persians in
matters of money, and sometimes were, but where women were concerned
they were generally little better than sentimental children, unless
they were mere animals. Not one in a thousand cared for the society
of women, or even of one particular woman, for its own sake, for the
companionship, and the exchange of ideas about things of which women
know how to think. To the better sort, that is, to the sentimental
ones, a woman always seemed what she was not, a goddess, a saint, or
a sort of glorified sister; to the rest, she was an instrument of
amusement and pleasure, more or less necessary and more or less
purchasable. Perhaps an Englishman or an American, judging Greeks from
what he could learn about them in ordinary intercourse, would get
about as near the truth as Logotheti did. In his main conclusion the
latter was probably right; Mr. Van Torp's affections might be of such
exuberant nature as would admit of being divided between two or three
objects at the same time, or they might not. But when he spoke of
having the 'highest regard' for Madame Cordova, without denying the
facts about the interview in which he had asked her to marry him and
had lost his head because she refused, he was at least admitting that
he was in love with her, or had been at that time.

Mr. Van Torp also confessed that he had entertained a 'high regard'
for the beautiful Mrs. Bamberger, now unhappily insane. It was
noticeable that he had not used the same expression in speaking of
Lady Maud. Nevertheless, as in the Bamberger affair, he appeared as
the chief cause of trouble between husband and wife. Logotheti was
considered 'dangerous' even in Paris, and his experiences had not
been dull; but, so far, he had found his way through life without
inadvertently stepping upon any of those concealed traps through which
the gay and unwary of both sexes are so often dropped into the divorce
court, to the surprise of everybody. It seemed the more strange to
him that Rufus Van Torp, only a few years his senior, should now find
himself in that position for the second time. Yet Van Torp was not
a ladies' man; he was hard-featured, rough of speech, and clumsy of
figure, and it was impossible to believe that any woman could think
him good-looking or be carried away by his talk. The case of Mrs.
Bamberger could be explained; she might have had beauty, but she
could have had little else that would have appealed to such a man as
Logotheti. But there was Lady Maud, an acknowledged beauty in London,
thoroughbred, aristocratic, not easily shocked perhaps, but easily
disgusted, like most women of her class; and there was no doubt but
that her husband had found her under extremely strange circumstances,
in the act of receiving from Van Torp a large sum of money for which
she altogether declined to account. Van Torp had not denied that story
either, so it was probably true. Yet Logotheti, whom so many women
thought irresistible, had felt instinctively that she was one of those
who would smile serenely upon the most skilful and persistent besieger
from the security of an impregnable fortress of virtue. Logotheti did
not naturally feel unqualified respect for many women, but since he
had known Lady Maud it had never occurred to him that any one could
take the smallest liberty with her. On the other hand, though he was
genuinely in love with Margaret and desired nothing so much as to
marry her, he had never been in the least afraid of her, and he had
deliberately attempted to carry her off against her will; and if she
had looked upon his conduct then as anything more serious than a mad
prank, she had certainly forgiven it very soon.

The only reason for his flying visit to Derbyshire had been his desire
to keep Margaret's name out of an impending scandal in which he
foresaw that Mr. Van Torp and Lady Maud were to be the central
figures, and he believed that he had done something to bring about
that result, if he had started the millionaire on the right scent. He
judged Van Torp to be a good hater and a man of many resources, who
would not now be satisfied till he had the anonymous writer of the
letter and the article in his power. Logotheti had no means of
guessing who the culprit was, and did not care to know.

He reached town late in the afternoon, having covered something like
three hundred miles since early morning. About seven o'clock he
stopped at Margaret's door, in the hope of finding her at home and of
being asked to dine alone with her, but as he got out of his hansom
and sent it away he heard the door shut and he found himself face to
face with Paul Griggs.

'Miss Donne is out,' said the author, as they shook hands. 'She's been
spending the day with the Creedmores, and when I rang she had just
telephoned that she would not be back for dinner!'

'What a bore!' exclaimed Logotheti.

The two men walked slowly along the pavement together, and for some
time neither spoke. Logotheti had nothing to do, or believed so
because he was disappointed in not finding Margaret in. The elder man
looked preoccupied, and the Greek was the first to speak.

'I suppose you've seen that shameful article about Van Torp,' he said.

'Yes. Somebody sent me a marked copy of the paper. Do you know whether
Miss Donne has seen it?'

'Yes. She got a marked copy too. So did I. What do you think of it?'

'Just what you do, I fancy. Have you any idea who wrote it?'

'Probably some underling in the Nickel Trust whom Van Torp has
offended without knowing it, or who has lost money by him.'

Griggs glanced at his companion's face, for the hypothesis struck him
as being tenable.

'Unless it is some enemy of Countess Leven's,' he suggested. 'Her
husband is really going to divorce her, as the article says.'

'I suppose she will defend herself,' said Logotheti.

'If she has a chance.'

'What do you mean?'

'Do you happen to know what sort of man the present Patriarch of
Constantinople is?'

Logotheti's jaw dropped, and he slackened his pace.

'What in the world--' he began, but did not finish the sentence.
'That's the second time to-day I've been asked about him.'

'That's very natural,' said Griggs calmly. 'You're one of the very few
men in town who are likely to know him.'

'Of course I know him,' answered Logotheti, still mystified. 'He's my
uncle.'

'Really? That's very lucky!'

'Look here, Griggs, is this some silly joke?'

'A joke? Certainly not. Lady Maud's husband can only get a divorce
through the Patriarch because he married her out of Russia. You know
about that law, don't you?'

Logotheti understood at last.

'No,' he said, 'I never heard of it. But if that is the case I may
be able to do something--not that I'm considered orthodox at the
Patriarchate! The old gentleman has been told that I'm trying to
revive the worship of the Greek gods and have built a temple to
Aphrodite Xenia in the Place de la Concorde!'

'You're quite capable of it,' observed Griggs.

'Oh, quite! Only, I've not done it yet. I'll see what I can do. Are
you much interested in the matter?'

'Only on general principles, because I believe Lady Maud is perfectly
straight, and it is a shame that such a creature as Leven should be
allowed to divorce an honest Englishwoman. By the bye--speaking of her
reminds me of that dinner at the Turkish Embassy--do you remember a
disagreeable-looking man who sat next to me, one Feist, a countryman
of mine?'

'Rather! I wondered how he came there.'

'He had a letter of introduction from the Turkish Minister in
Washington. He is full of good letters of introduction.'

'I should think they would need to be good,' observed Logotheti.
'With that face of his he would need an introduction to a Port Said
gambling-hell before they would let him in.'

'I agree with you. But he is well provided, as I say, and he goes
everywhere. Some one has put him down at the Mutton Chop. You never go
there, do you?'

'I'm not asked,' laughed Logotheti. 'And as for becoming a member,
they say it's impossible.'

'It takes ten or fifteen years,' Griggs answered, 'and then you won't
be elected unless every one likes you. But you may be put down as
a visitor there just as at any other club. This fellow Feist, for
instance--we had trouble with him last night--or rather this morning,
for it was two o'clock. He has been dropping in often of late, towards
midnight. At first he was more or less amusing with his stories, for
he has a wonderful memory. You know the sort of funny man who rattles
on as if he were wound up for the evening, and afterwards you cannot
remember a word he has said. It's all very well for a while, but you
soon get sick of it. Besides, this particular specimen drinks like a
whale.'

'He looks as if he did.'

'Last night he had been talking a good deal, and most of the men who
had been there had gone off. You know there's only one room at the
Mutton Chop, with a long table, and if a man takes the floor there's
no escape. I had come in about one o'clock to get something to eat,
and Feist poured out a steady stream of stories as usual, though only
one or two listened to him. Suddenly his eyes looked queer, and he
stammered, and rolled off his chair, and lay in a heap, either dead
drunk or in a fit, I don't know which.'

'And I suppose you carried him downstairs,' said Logotheti, for Griggs
was known to be stronger than other men, though no longer young.

'I did,' Griggs answered. 'That's usually my share of the proceedings.
The last person I carried--let me see--I think it must have been that
poor girl who died at the Opera in New York. We had found Feist's
address in the visitors' book, and we sent him home in a hansom. I
wonder whether he got there!'

'I should think the member who put him down would be rather annoyed,'
observed Logotheti.

'Yes. It's the first time anything of that sort ever happened at the
Mutton Chop, and I fancy it will be the last. I don't think we shall
see Mr. Feist again.'

'I took a particular dislike to his face,' Logotheti said. 'I remember
thinking of him when I went home that night, and wondering who he was
and what he was about.'

'At first I took him for a detective,' said Griggs. 'But detectives
don't drink.'

'What made you think he might be one?'

'He has a very clever way of leading the conversation to a point and
then asking an unexpected question.'

'Perhaps he is an amateur,' suggested Logotheti. 'He may be a spy. Is
Feist an American name?'

'You will find all sorts of names in America. They prove nothing in
the way of nationality, unless they are English, Dutch, or French, and
even then they don't prove much. I'm an American myself, and I feel
sure that Feist either is one or has spent many years in the country,
in which case he is probably naturalised. As for his being a spy, I
don't think I ever came across one in England.'

'They come here to rest in time of peace, or to escape hanging in
other countries in time of war,' said the Greek. 'His being at the
Turkish Embassy, of all places in the world, is rather in favour of
the idea. Do you happen to remember the name of his hotel?'

'Are you going to call on him?' Griggs asked with a smile.

'Perhaps. He begins to interest me. Is it indiscreet to ask what sort
of questions he put to you?'

'He's stopping at the Carlton--if the cabby took him there! We gave
the man half-a-crown for the job, and took his number, so I suppose
it was all right. As for the questions he asked me, that's another
matter.'

Logotheti glanced quickly at his companion's rather grim face, and was
silent for a few moments. He judged that Mr. Feist's inquiries must
have concerned a woman, since Griggs was so reticent, and it required
no great ingenuity to connect that probability with one or both of the
ladies who had been at the dinner where Griggs and Feist had first
met.

'I think I shall go and ask for Mr. Feist,' he said presently. 'I
shall say that I heard he was ill and wanted to know if I could do
anything for him.'

'I've no doubt he'll be much touched by your kindness!' said Griggs.
'But please don't mention the Mutton Chop Club, if you really see
him.'

'Oh no! Besides, I shall let him do the talking.'

'Then take care that you don't let him talk you to death!'

Logotheti smiled as he hailed a passing hansom; he nodded to his
companion, told the man to go to the Carlton, and drove away, leaving
Griggs to continue his walk alone.

The elderly man of letters had not talked about Mr. Feist with any
special intention, and was very far from thinking that what he had
said would lead to any important result. He liked the Greek, because
he liked most Orientals, under certain important reservations and at a
certain distance, and he had lived amongst them long enough not to be
surprised at anything they did. Logotheti had been disappointed in not
finding the Primadonna at home, and he was not inclined to put up with
the usual round of an evening in London during the early part of the
season as a substitute for what he had lost. He was the more put out,
because, when he had last seen Margaret, three or four days earlier,
she had told him that if he came on that evening at about seven
o'clock he would probably find her alone. Having nothing that looked
at all amusing to occupy him, he was just in the mood to do anything
unusual that presented itself.

Griggs guessed at most of these things, and as he walked along he
vaguely pictured to himself the interview that was likely to take
place.




CHAPTER XII


Opinion was strongly against Mr. Van Torp. A millionaire is almost
as good a mark at which to throw mud as a woman of the world whose
reputation has never before been attacked, and when the two can be
pilloried together it is hardly to be expected that ordinary people
should abstain from pelting them and calling them bad names.

Lady Maud, indeed, was protected to some extent by her father and
brothers, and by many loyal friends. It is happily still doubtful how
far one may go in printing lies about an honest woman without getting
into trouble with the law, and when the lady's father is not only a
peer, but has previously been a barrister of reputation and a popular
and hard-working member of the House of Commons during a long time,
it is generally safer to use guarded language; the advisability of
moderation also increases directly as the number and size of the
lady's brothers, and inversely as their patience. Therefore, on the
whole, Lady Maud was much better treated by the society columns than
Margaret at first expected.

On the other hand, they vented their spleen and sharpened their
English on the American financier, who had no relations and scarcely
any friends to stand by him, and was, moreover, in a foreign country,
which always seems to be regarded as an aggravating circumstance when
a man gets into any sort of trouble. Isidore Bamberger and Mr. Feist
had roused and let loose upon him a whole pack of hungry reporters and
paragraph writers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The papers did not at first print his name except in connection with
the divorce of Lady Maud. But this was a landmark, the smallest
reference to which made all other allusions to him quite clear. It
was easy to speak of Mr. Van Torp as the central figure in a _cause
célèbre_: newspapers love the French language the more as they
understand it the less; just as the gentle amateur in literature tries
to hide his cloven hoof under the thin elegance of italics.

Particular stress was laid upon the millionaire's dreadful hypocrisy.
He taught in the Sunday Schools at Nickelville, the big village which
had sprung up at his will and which was the headquarters of his
sanctimonious wickedness. He was compared to Solomon, not for his
wisdom, but on account of his domestic arrangements. He was indeed a
father to his flock. It was a touching sight to see the little ones
gathered round the knees of this great and good man, and to note
how an unconscious and affectionate imitation reflected his face
in theirs. It was true that there was another side to this truly
patriarchal picture. In a city of the Far West, wrote an eloquent
paragraph writer, a pale face, once divinely beautiful, was often seen
at the barred window of a madhouse, and eyes that had once looked too
tenderly into those of the Nickelville Solomon stared wildly at
the palm-trees in the asylum grounds. This paragraph was rich in
sentiment.

There were a good many mentions of the explosion in New York, too, and
hints, dark, but uncommonly straight, that the great Sunday School
teacher had been the author and stage-manager of an awful comedy
designed expressly to injure a firm of contractors against whom he had
a standing grudge. In proof of the assertion, the story went on to say
that he had written four hours before the 'accident' happened to give
warning of it to the young lady whom he was about to marry. She was
a neurasthenic young lady, and in spite of the warning she died very
suddenly at the theatre from shock immediately after the explosion,
and his note was found on her dressing-table when she was brought home
dead. Clearly, if the explosion had not been his work, and if he had
been informed of it beforehand, he would have warned the police and
the Department of Public Works at the same time. The young lady's
untimely death had not prevented him from sailing for Europe three or
four days later, and on the trip he had actually occupied alone the
same 'thousand dollar suite' which he had previously engaged for
himself and his bride. From this detail the public might form some
idea of the Nickelville magnate's heartless character. In fact, if
one-half of what was written, telegraphed, and printed about Rufus Van
Torp on both sides of the Atlantic during the next fortnight was to be
believed, he had no character at all.

To all this he answered nothing, and he did not take the trouble to
allude to the matter in the few letters he wrote to his acquaintances.
Day after day numbers of marked papers were carefully ironed and laid
on the breakfast-table, after having been read and commented on in the
servants' hall. The butler began to look askance at him, Mrs. Dubbs,
the housekeeper, talked gloomily of giving warning, and the footmen
gossiped with the stable hands; but the men all decided that it was
not derogatory to their dignity to remain in the service of a master
who was soon to be exhibited in the divorce court beside such a 'real
lady' as Lord Creedmore's daughter; the housemaids agreed in this
view, and the housekeeper consulted Miss More. For Mrs. Dubbs was an
imposing person, morally and physically, and had a character to lose;
and though the place was a very good one for her old age, because the
master only spent six weeks or two months at Oxley Paddox each year,
and never found fault, yet Mrs. Dubbs was not going to have her name
associated with that of a gentleman who blew up underground works and
took Solomon's view of the domestic affections. She came of very good
people in the north; one of her brothers was a minister, and the other
was an assistant steward on a large Scotch estate.

Miss More's quiet serenity was not at all disturbed by what was
happening, for it could hardly be supposed that she was ignorant of
the general attack on Mr. Van Torp, though he did not leave the papers
lying about, where little Ida's quick eyes might fall on a marked
passage. The housekeeper waited for an occasion when Mr. Van Torp
had taken the child for a drive, as he often did, and Miss More was
established in her favourite corner of the garden, just out of sight
of the house. Mrs. Dubbs first exposed the situation, then expressed
a strong opinion as to her own respectability, and finally asked Miss
More's advice.

Miss More listened attentively, and waited till her large and sleek
interlocutor had absolutely nothing more to say. Then she spoke.

'Mrs. Dubbs,' she said, 'do you consider me a respectable young
woman?'

'Oh, Miss More!' cried the housekeeper. 'You! Indeed, I'd put my hand
into the fire for you any day!'

'And I'm an American, and I've known Mr. Van Torp several years,
though this is the first time you have seen me here. Do you think I
would let the child stay an hour under his roof, or stay here myself,
if I believed one word of all those wicked stories the papers are
publishing? Look at me, please. Do you think I would?'

It was quite impossible to look at Miss More's quiet healthy face and
clear eyes and to believe she would. There are some women of whom
one is sure at a glance that they are perfectly trustworthy in every
imaginable way, and above even the suspicion of countenancing any
wrong.

'No,' answered Mrs. Dubbs, with honest conviction, 'I don't, indeed.'

'I think, then,' said Miss More, 'that if I feel I can stay here, you
are safe in staying too. I do not believe any of these slanders, and
I am quite sure that Mr. Van Torp is one of the kindest men in the
world.'

'I feel as if you must be right, Miss More,' replied the housekeeper.
'But they do say dreadful things about him, indeed, and he doesn't
deny a word of it, as he ought to, in my humble opinion, though it's
not my business to judge, of course, but I'll say this, Miss More, and
that is, that if the butler's character was publicly attacked in the
papers, in the way Mr. Van Torp's is, and if I were Mr. Van Torp,
which of course I'm not, I'd say "Crookes, you may be all right, but
if you're going to be butler here any longer, it's your duty to defend
yourself against these attacks upon you in the papers, Crookes,
because as a Christian man you must not hide your light under a
bushel, Crookes, but let it shine abroad." That's what I'd say, Miss
More, and I should like to know if you don't think I should be right.'

'If the English and American press united to attack the butler's
character,' answered Miss More without a smile, 'I think you would
be quite right, Mrs. Dubbs. But as regards Mr. Van Torp's present
position, I am sure he is the best judge of what he ought to do.'

These words of wisdom, and Miss More's truthful eyes, greatly
reassured the housekeeper, who afterwards upbraided the servants for
paying any attention to such wicked falsehoods; and Mr. Crookes, the
butler, wrote to his aged mother, who was anxious about his situation,
to say that Mr. Van Torp must be either a real gentleman or a very
hardened criminal indeed, because it was only forgers and real
gentlemen who could act so precious cool; but that, on the whole, he,
Crookes, and the housekeeper, who was a highly respectable person and
the sister of a minister, as he wished his mother to remember, had
made up their minds that Mr. V.T. was Al, copper-bottomed--Mrs.
Crookes was the widow of a seafaring man, and lived at Liverpool,
and had heard Lloyd's rating quoted all her life--and that they, the
writer and Mrs. Dubbs, meant to see him through his troubles, though
he was a little trying at his meals, for he would have butter on
the table at his dinner, and he wanted two and three courses served
together, and drank milk at his luncheon, like no Christian gentleman
did that Mr. Crookes had ever seen.

The financier might have been amused if he could have read this
letter, which contained no allusion to the material attractions
of Torp Towers as a situation; for like a good many American
millionaires, Mr. Van Torp had a blind spot on his financial retina.
He could deal daringly and surely with vast sums, or he could screw
twice the normal quantity of work out of an underpaid clerk; but the
household arithmetic that lies between the two was entirely beyond his
comprehension. He 'didn't want to be bothered,' he said; he maintained
that he 'could make more money in ten minutes than he could save in a
year by checking the housekeeper's accounts'; he 'could live on coffee
and pie,' but if he chose to hire the chef of the Cafe Anglais to cook
for him at five thousand dollars a year he 'didn't want to know the
price of a truffled pheasant or a chaudfroid of ortolans.' That was
his way, and it was good enough for him. What was the use of having
made money if you were to be bothered? And besides, he concluded, 'it
was none of anybody's blank blank business what he did.'

Mr. Van Torp did not hesitate to borrow similes from another world
when his rather limited command of refined language was unequal to the
occasion.

But at the present juncture, though his face did not change, and
though he slept as soundly and had as good an appetite as usual, no
words with which he was acquainted could express his feelings at all.
He had, indeed, consigned the writer of the first article to perdition
with some satisfaction; but after his interview with Logotheti,
when he had understood that a general attack upon him had begun, he
gathered his strength in silence and studied the position with all the
concentration of earnest thought which his exceptional nature could
command.

He had recognised Feist's handwriting, and he remembered the man as
his partner's former secretary. Feist might have written the letter
to Logotheti and the first article, but Van Torp did not believe
him capable of raising a general hue and cry on both sides of the
Atlantic. It undoubtedly happened sometimes that when a fire had been
smouldering long unseen a single spark sufficed to start the blaze,
but Mr. Van Torp was too well informed as to public opinion about him
to have been in ignorance of any general feeling against him, if it
had existed; and the present attack was of too personal a nature to
have been devised by financial rivals. Besides, the Nickel Trust had
recently absorbed all its competitors to such an extent that it had no
rivals at all, and the dangers that threatened it lay on the one hand
in the growing strength of the Labour Party in its great movement
against capital, and on the other in its position with regard to
recent American legislation about Trusts. From the beginning Mr. Van
Torp had been certain that the campaign of defamation had not been
begun by the Unions, and by its nature it could have no connection
with the legal aspect of his position. It was therefore clear that
war had been declared upon him by one or more individuals on purely
personal grounds, and that Mr. Feist was but the chief instrument in
the hands of an unknown enemy.

But at first sight it did not look as if his assailant were Isidore
Bamberger. The violent attack on him might not affect the credit of
the Nickel Trust, but it was certainly not likely to improve it and
Mr. Van Torp believed that if his partner had a grudge against him,
any attempt at revenge would be made in a shape that would not affect
the Trust's finances. Bamberger was a resentful sort of man, but on
the other hand he was a man of business, and his fortune depended on
that of his great partner.

Mr. Van Torp walked every morning in the park, thinking over these
things, and little Ida tripped along beside him watching the squirrels
and the birds, and not saying much; but now and then, when she felt
the gentle pressure of his hand on hers, which usually meant that he
was going to speak to her, she looked up to watch his lips, and they
did not move; only his eyes met hers, and the faint smile that came
into his face then was not at all like the one which most people saw
there. So she smiled back, happily, and looked at the squirrels again,
sure that a rabbit would soon make a dash over the open and cross the
road, and hoping for the rare delight of seeing a hare. And the tame
red and fallow deer looked at her suspiciously from a distance, as if
she might turn into a motor-car. In those morning walks she did not
again see his lips forming words that frightened her, and she began to
be quite sure that he had stopped swearing to himself because she had
spoken to him so seriously.

Once he looked at her so long and with so much earnestness that she
asked him what he was thinking of, and he gently pushed back the
broad-brimmed hat she wore, so as to see her forehead and beautiful
golden hair.

'You are growing very like your mother,' he said, after a little
while.

They had stopped in the broad drive, and little Ida gazed gravely up
at him for a moment. Then she put up her arms.

'I think I want to give you a kiss, Mr. Van Torp,' she said with the
utmost gravity. 'You're so good to me.'

Mr. Van Torp stooped, and she put her arms round his short neck and
kissed the hard, flat cheek once, and he kissed hers rather awkwardly.

'Thank you, my dear,' he said, in an odd voice, as he straightened
himself.

He took her hand again to walk on, and the great iron mouth was drawn
a little to one side, and it looked as if the lips might have trembled
if they had not been so tightly shut. Perhaps Mr. Van Torp had never
kissed a child before.

She was very happy and contented, for she had spent most of her life
in a New England village alone with Miss More, and the great English
country-house was full of wonder and mystery for her, and the park was
certainly the Earthly Paradise. She had hardly ever been with other
children and was rather afraid of them, because they did not always
understand what she said, as most grown people did; so she was not at
all lonely now. On the contrary, she felt that her small existence
was ever so much fuller than before, since she now loved two people
instead of only one, and the two people seemed to agree so well
together. In America she had only seen Mr. Van Torp at intervals, when
he had appeared at the cottage near Boston, the bearer of toys and
chocolates and other good things, and she had not been told till after
she had landed in Liverpool that she was to be taken to stop with him
in the country while he remained in England. Till then he had always
called her 'Miss Ida,' in an absurdly formal way, but ever since she
had arrived at Oxley Paddox he had dropped the 'Miss,' and had never
failed to spend two or three hours alone with her every day. Though
his manner had not changed much, and he treated her with a sort of
queer formality, much as he would have behaved if she had been twenty
years old instead of nine, she had been growing more and more sure
that he loved her and would give her anything in the world she asked
for, though there was really nothing she wanted; and in return she
grew gratefully fond of him by quick degrees, till her affection
expressed itself in her solemn proposal to 'give him a kiss.'

Not long after that Mr. Van Torp found amongst his letters one from
Lady Maud, of which the envelope was stamped with the address of her
father's country place, 'Craythew.' He read the contents carefully,
and made a note in his pocket-book before tearing the sheet and the
envelope into a number of small bits.

There was nothing very compromising in the note, but Mr. Van Torp
certainly did not know that his butler regularly offered first and
second prizes in the servants' hall, every Saturday night, for the
'best-put-together letters' of the week--to those of his satellites,
in other words, who had been most successful in piecing together
scraps from the master's wastepaper basket. In houses where the
post-bag has a patent lock, of which the master keeps the key, this
diversion has been found a good substitute for the more thrilling
entertainment of steaming the letters and reading them before taking
them upstairs. If Mrs. Dubbs was aware of Mr. Crookes' weekly
distribution of rewards she took no notice of it; but as she rarely
condescended to visit the lower regions, and only occasionally asked
Mr. Crookes to dine in her own sitting-room, she may be allowed the
benefit of the doubt; and, besides, she was a very superior person.

On the day after he had received Lady Maud's note, Mr. Van Torp rode
out by himself. No one, judging from his looks, would have taken him
for a good rider. He rode seldom, too, never talked of horses, and was
never seen at a race. When he rode he did not even take the trouble to
put on gaiters, and, after he had bought Oxley Paddox, the first time
that his horse was brought to the door, by a groom who had never seen
him, the latter could have sworn that the millionaire had never been
on a horse before and was foolishly determined to break his neck. On
that occasion Mr. Van Torp came down the steps, with a big cigar in
his mouth, in his ordinary clothes, without so much as a pair of
straps to keep his trousers down, or a bit of a stick in his hand. The
animal was a rather ill-tempered black that had arrived from Yorkshire
two days previously in charge of a boy who gave him a bad character.
As Mr. Van Torp descended the steps with his clumsy gait, the horse
laid his ears well back for a moment and looked as if he meant to
kick anything within reach. Mr. Van Torp looked at him in a dull way,
puffed his cigar, and made one remark in the form of a query.

'He ain't a lamb, is he?'

'No, sir,' answered the groom with sympathetic alacrity, 'and if I was
you, sir, I wouldn't--'

But the groom's good advice was checked by an unexpected phenomenon.
Mr. Van Torp was suddenly up, and the black was plunging wildly as
was only to be expected; what was more extraordinary was that Mr. Van
Torp's expression showed no change whatever, the very big cigar was
stuck in his mouth at precisely the same angle as before, and he
appeared to be glued to the saddle. He sat perfectly erect, with his
legs perpendicularly straight, and his hands low and quiet.

The next moment the black bolted down the drive, but Mr. Van Torp did
not seem the least disturbed, and the astonished groom, his mouth wide
open and his arms hanging down, saw that the rider gave the beast his
head for a couple of hundred yards, and then actually stopped him
short, bringing him almost to the ground on his haunches.

'My Gawd, 'e's a cowboy!' exclaimed the groom, who was a Cockney,
and had seen a Wild West show and recognised the real thing. 'And
me thinkin' 'e was goin' to break his precious neck and wastin' my
bloomin' sympathy on 'im!'

Since that first day Mr. Van Torp had not ridden more than a score of
times in two years. He preferred driving, because it was less trouble,
and partly because he could take little Ida with him. It was therefore
always a noticeable event in the monotonous existence at Torp Towers
when he ordered a horse to be saddled, as he did on the day after he
had got Lady Maud's note from Craythew.

He rode across the hilly country at a leisurely pace, first by lanes
and afterwards over a broad moor, till he entered a small beech wood
by a bridle-path not wide enough for two to ride together, and lined
with rhododendrons, lilacs, and laburnum. A quarter of a mile from
the entrance a pretty glade widened to an open lawn, in the middle
of which stood a ruin, consisting of the choir and chancel arch of a
chapel. Mr. Van Torp drew rein before it, threw his right leg over the
pommel before him, and remained sitting sideways on the saddle, for
the very good reason that he did not see anything to sit on if he got
down, and that it was of no use to waste energy in standing. His horse
might have resented such behaviour on the part of any one else, but
accepted the western rider's eccentricities quite calmly and proceeded
to crop the damp young grass at his feet.

Mr. Van Torp had come to meet Lady Maud. The place was lonely and
conveniently situated, being about half-way between Oxley Paddox and
Craythew, on Mr. Van Torp's land, which was so thoroughly protected
against trespassers and reporters by wire fences and special watchmen
that there was little danger of any one getting within the guarded
boundary. On the side towards Craythew there was a gate with a patent
lock, to which Lady Maud had a key.

Mr. Van Torp was at the meeting-place at least a quarter of an hour
before the appointed time. His horse only moved a short step every now
and then, eating his way slowly across the grass, and his rider sat
sideways, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at nothing
particular, with that perfectly wooden expression of his which
indicated profound thought.

But his senses were acutely awake, and he caught the distant sound of
hoofs on the soft woodland path just a second before his horse lifted
his head and pricked his ears. Mr. Van Torp did not slip to the
ground, however, and he hardly changed his position. Half a dozen
young pheasants hurled themselves noisily out of the wood on the other
side of the ruin, and scattered again as they saw him, to perch on
the higher boughs of the trees not far off instead of settling on
the sward. A moment later Lady Maud appeared, on a lanky and elderly
thoroughbred that had been her own long before her marriage. Her
old-fashioned habit was evidently of the same period too; it had been
made before the modern age of skirted coats, and fitted her figure in
a way that would have excited open disapproval and secret admiration
in Rotten Row. But she never rode in town, so that it did not matter;
and, besides, Lady Maud did not care.

Mr. Van Torp raised his hat in a very un-English way, and at the same
time, apparently out of respect for his friend, he went so far as to
change his seat a little by laying his right knee over the pommel and
sticking his left foot into the stirrup, so that he sat like a woman.
Lady Maud drew up on his off side and they shook hands.

'You look rather comfortable,' she said, and the happy ripple was in
her voice.

'Why, yes. There's nothing else to sit on, and the grass is wet. Do
you want to get off?'

'I thought we might make some tea presently,' answered Lady Maud.
'I've brought my basket.'

'Now I call that quite sweet!' Mr. Van Torp seemed very much pleased,
and he looked down at the shabby little brown basket hanging at her
saddle.

He slipped to the ground, and she did the same before he could go
round to help her. The old thoroughbred nosed her hand as if expecting
something good, and she produced a lump of sugar from the tea-basket
and gave it to him.

Mr. Van Torp pulled a big carrot from the pocket of his tweed jacket
and let his horse bite it off by inches. Then he took the basket from
Lady Maud and the two went towards the ruin.

'We can sit on the Earl,' said Lady Maud, advancing towards a low tomb
on which was sculptured a recumbent figure in armour. 'The horses
won't run away from such nice grass.'

So the two installed themselves on each side of the stone knight's
armed feet, which helped to support the tea-basket, and Lady Maud took
out her spirit-lamp and a saucepan that just held two cups, and a tin
bottle full of water, and all the other things, arranging them neatly
in order.

'How practical women are!' exclaimed Mr. Van Torp, looking on. 'Now I
would never have thought of that.'

But he was really wondering whether she expected him to speak first of
the grave matters that brought them together in that lonely place.

'I've got some bread and butter,' she said, opening a small
sandwich-box, 'and there is a lemon instead of cream.'

'Your arrangements beat Hare Court hollow,' observed the millionaire.
'Do you remember the cracked cups and the weevilly biscuits?'

'Yes, and how sorry you were when you had burnt the little beasts! Now
light the spirit-lamp, please, and then we can talk.'

Everything being arranged to her satisfaction, Lady Maud looked up at
her companion.

'Are you going to do anything about it?' she asked.

'Will it do any good if I do? That's the question.'

'Good? What is good in that sense?' She looked at him a moment, but
as he did not answer she went on. 'I cannot bear to see you abused in
print like this, day after day, when I know the truth, or most of it.'

'It doesn't matter about me. I'm used to it. What does your father
say?'

'He says that when a man is attacked as you are, it's his duty to
defend himself.'

'Oh, he does, does he?'

Lady Maud smiled, but shook her head in a reproachful way.

'You promised me that you would never give me your business answer,
you know!'

'I'm sorry,' said Mr. Van Torp, in a tone of contrition. 'Well, you
see, I forgot you weren't a man. I won't do it again. So your father
thinks I'd better come out flat-footed with a statement to the press.
Now, I'll tell you. I'd do so, if I didn't feel sure that all this
circus about me isn't the real thing yet. It's been got up with an
object, and until I can make out what's coming I think I'd best keep
still. Whoever's at the root of this is counting on my losing my
temper and hitting out, and saying things, and then the real attack
will come from an unexpected quarter. Do you see that? Under the
circumstances, almost any man in my position would get interviewed and
talk back, wouldn't he?'

'I fancy so,' answered Lady Maud.

'Exactly. If I did that, I might be raising against another man's
straight flush, don't you see? A good way in a fight is never to do
what everybody else would do. But I've got a scheme for getting behind
the other man, whoever he is, and I've almost concluded to try it.'

'Will you tell me what it is?'

'Don't I always tell you most things?'

Lady Maud smiled at the reservation implied in 'most.'

'After all you have done for me, I should have no right to complain if
you never told me anything,' she answered. 'Do as you think best. You
know that I trust you.'

'That's right, and I appreciate it,' answered the millionaire. 'In
the first place, you're not going to be divorced. I suppose that's
settled.'

Lady Maud opened her clear eyes in surprise.

'You didn't know that, did you?' asked Mr. Van Torp, enjoying her
astonishment.

'Certainly not, and I can hardly believe it,' she answered.

'Look here, Maud,' said her companion, bending his heavy brows in a
way very unusual with him, 'do you seriously think I'd let you be
divorced on my account? That I'd allow any human being to play tricks
with your good name by coupling it with mine in any sort of way? If
I were the kind of man about whom you had a right to think that, I
wouldn't deserve your friendship.'

It was not often that Rufus Van Torp allowed his face to show feeling,
but the look she saw in his rough-hewn features for a moment almost
frightened her. There was something Titanic in it.

'No, Rufus--no!' she cried, earnestly. 'You know how I have believed
in you and trusted you! It's only that I don't see how--'

'That's a detail,' answered the American. 'The "how" don't matter
when a man's in earnest.' The look was gone again, for her words had
appeased him instantly. 'Well,' he went on, in his ordinary tone,
'you can take it for granted that the divorce will come to nothing.
There'll be a clear statement in all the best papers next week, saying
that your husband's suit for a divorce has been dismissed with costs
because there is not the slightest evidence of any kind against you.
It will be stated that you came to my partner's chambers in Hare Court
on a matter of pure business, to receive certain money, which was due
to you from me in the way of business, for which you gave me the usual
business acknowledgment. So that's that! I had a wire yesterday to say
it's as good as settled. The water's boiling.'

The steam was lifting the lid of the small saucepan, which stood
securely on the spirit-lamp between the marble knight's greaved shins.
But Lady Maud took no notice of it.

'It's like you,' said she. 'I cannot find anything else to say!'

'It doesn't matter about saying anything,' returned Mr. Van Torp. 'The
water's boiling.'

'Will you blow out the lamp?' As she spoke she dropped a battered
silver tea-ball into the water, and moved it about by its little
chain.

Mr. Van Torp took off his hat, and bent down sideways till his flat
cheek rested on the knight's stone shin, and he blew out the flame
with one well-aimed puff. Lady Maud did not look at the top of his
head, nor steal a furtive glance at the strong muscles and sinews of
his solid neck. She did nothing of the kind. She bobbed the tea-ball
up and down in the saucepan by its chain, and watched how the hot
water turned brown.

'But I did not give you a "business acknowledgment," as you call it,'
she said thoughtfully. 'It's not quite truthful to say I did, you
know.'

'Does that bother you? All right.'

He produced his well-worn pocket-book, found a scrap of white paper
amongst the contents, and laid it on the leather. Then he took his
pencil and wrote a few words.

'Received of R. Van Torp £4100 to balance of account.'

He held out the pencil, and laid the pocket-book on his palm for her
to write. She read the words with out moving.

'"To balance of account"--what does that mean?'

'It means that it's a business transaction. At the time you couldn't
make any further claim against me. That's all it means.'

He put the pencil to the paper again, and wrote the date of the
meeting in Hare Court.

'There! If you sign your name to that, it just means that you had no
further claim against me on that day. You hadn't, anyway, so you may
just as well sign!'

He held out the paper, and Lady Maud took it with a smile and wrote
her signature.

'Thank you,' said Mr. Van Torp. 'Now you're quite comfortable, I
suppose, for you can't deny that you have given me the usual business
acknowledgment. The other part of it is that I don't care to keep that
kind of receipt long, so I just strike a match and burn it.' He did
so, and watched the flimsy scrap turn black on the stone knight's
knee, till the gentle breeze blew the ashes away. 'So there!' he
concluded. 'If you were called upon to swear in evidence that you
signed a proper receipt for the money, you couldn't deny it, could
you? A receipt's good if given at any time after the money has been
paid. What's the matter? Why do you look as if you doubted it? What is
truth, anyhow? It's the agreement of the facts with the statement of
them, isn't it? Well, I don't see but the statement coincides with the
facts all right now.'

While he had been talking Lady Maud had poured out the tea, and had
cut some thin slices from the lemon, glancing at him incredulously now
and then, but smiling in spite of herself.

'That's all sophistry,' she said, as she handed him his cup.

'Thanks,' he answered, taking it from her. 'Look here! Can you deny
that you have given me a formal dated receipt for four thousand one
hundred pounds?'

'No--'

'Well, then, what can't be denied is the truth; and if I choose to
publish the truth about you, I don't suppose you can find fault with
it.'

'No, but--'

'Excuse me for interrupting, but there is no "but." What's good in law
is good enough for me, and the Attorney-General and all his angels
couldn't get behind that receipt now, if they tried till they were
black in the face.'

Mr. Van Torp's similes were not always elegant.

'Tip-top tea,' he remarked, as Lady Maud did not attempt to say
anything more. 'That was a bright idea of yours, bringing the lemon,
too.'

He took several small sips in quick succession, evidently appreciating
the quality of the tea as a connoisseur.

'I don't know how you have managed to do it,' said Lady Maud at last.
'As you say, the "how" does not matter very much. Perhaps it's just as
well that I should not know how you got at the Patriarch. I couldn't
be more grateful if I knew the whole story.'

'There's no particular story about it. When I found he was the man to
be seen, I sent a man to see him. That's all.'

'It sounds very simple,' said Lady Maud, whose acquaintance with
American slang was limited, even after she had known Mr. Van Torp
intimately for two years. 'You were going to tell me more. You said
you had a plan for catching the real person who is responsible for
this attack on you.'

'Well, I have a sort of an idea, but I'm not quite sure how the land
lays. By the bye,' he said quickly, correcting himself, 'isn't that
one of the things I say wrong? You told me I ought to say how the land
"lies," didn't you? I always forget.'

Lady Maud laughed as she looked at him, for she was quite sure that he
had only taken up his own mistake in order to turn the subject from
the plan of which he did not mean to speak.

'You know that I'm not in the least curious,' she said, 'so don't
waste any cleverness in putting me off! I only wish to know whether I
can help you to carry out your plan. I had an idea too. I thought of
getting my father to have a week-end party at Craythew, to which you
would be asked, by way of showing people that he knows all about our
friendship, and approves of it in spite of what my husband has been
trying to do. Would that suit you? Would it help you or not?'

'It might come in nicely after the news about the divorce appears,'
answered Mr. Van Torp approvingly. 'It would be just the same if I
went over to dinner every day, and didn't sleep in the house, wouldn't
it?'

'I'm not sure,' Lady Maud said. 'I don't think it would, quite. It
might seem odd that you should dine with us every day, whereas if you
stop with us people cannot but see that my father wants you.'

'How about Lady Creedmore?'

'My mother is on the continent. Why in the world do you not want to
come?'

'Oh, I don't know,' answered Mr. Van Torp vaguely. 'Just like that,
I suppose. I was thinking. But it'll be all right, and I'll come any
way, and please tell your father that I highly appreciate the kind
invitation. When is it to be?'

'Come on Thursday next week and stay till Tuesday. Then you will be
there when the first people come and till the last have left. That
will look even better.'

'Maybe they'll say you take boarders,' observed Mr. Van Torp
facetiously. 'That other piece belongs to you.'

While talking they had finished their tea, and only one slice of bread
and butter was left in the sandwich-box.

'No,' answered Lady Maud, 'it's yours. I took the first.'

'Let's go shares,' suggested the millionaire.

'There's no knife.'

'Break it.'

Lady Maud doubled the slice with conscientious accuracy, gently
pulled the pieces apart at the crease, and held out one half to her
companion. He took it as naturally as if they had been children, and
they ate their respective shares in silence. As a matter of fact Mr.
Van Torp had been unconsciously and instinctively more interested in
the accuracy of the division than in the very beautiful white fingers
that performed it.

'Who are the other people going to be?' he asked when he had finished
eating, and Lady Maud was beginning to put the tea-things back into
the basket.

'That depends on whom we can get. Everybody is awfully busy just now,
you know. The usual sort of set, I suppose. You know the kind of
people who come to us--you've met lots of them. I thought of asking
Miss Donne if she is free. You know her, don't you?'

'Why, yes, I do. You've read those articles about our interview in New
York, I suppose.'

Lady Maud, who had been extremely occupied with her own affairs of
late, had almost forgotten the story, and was now afraid that she had
made a mistake, but she caught at the most evident means of setting it
right.

'Yes, of course. All the better, if you are seen stopping in the same
house. People will see that it's all right.'

'Well, maybe they would. I'd rather, if it'll do her any good. But
perhaps she doesn't want to meet me. She wasn't over-anxious to talk
to me on the steamer, I noticed, and I didn't bother her much. She's a
lovely woman!'

Lady Maud looked at him, and her beautiful mouth twitched as if she
wanted to laugh.

'Miss Donne doesn't think you're a "lovely" man at all,' she said.

'No,' answered Mr. Van Torp, in a tone of child-like and almost
sheepish regret, 'she doesn't, and I suppose she's right. I didn't
know how to take her, or she wouldn't have been so angry.'

'When? Did you really ask her to marry you?' Lady Maud was smiling
now.

'Why, yes, I did. Why shouldn't I? I guess it wasn't very well done,
though, and I was a fool to try and take her hand after she'd said
no.'

'Oh, you tried to take her hand?'

'Yes, and the next thing I knew she'd rushed out of the room and
bolted the door, as if I was a dangerous lunatic and she'd just found
it out. That's what happened--just that. It wasn't my fault if I was
in earnest, I suppose.'

'And just after that you were engaged to poor Miss Bamberger,' said
Lady Maud in a tone of reflection.

'Yes,' answered Mr. Van Torp slowly. 'Nothing mattered much just then,
and the engagement was the business side. I told you about all that in
Hare Court.'

'You're a singular mixture of several people all in one! I shall never
quite understand you.'

'Maybe not. But if you don't, nobody else is likely to, and I mean to
be frank to you every time. I suppose you think I'm heartless.
Perhaps I am. I don't know. You have to know about the business side
sometimes; I wish you didn't, for it's not the side of myself I like
best.'

The aggressive blue eyes softened a little as he spoke, and there was
a touch of deep regret in his harsh voice.

'No,' answered Lady Maud, 'I don't like it either. But you are not
heartless. Don't say that of yourself, please--please don't! You
cannot fancy how it would hurt me to think that your helping me was
only a rich man's caprice, that because a few thousand pounds are
nothing to you it amused you to throw the money away on me and my
ideas, and that you would just as soon put it on a horse, or play with
it at Monte Carlo!'

'Well, you needn't worry,' observed Mr. Van Torp, smiling in a
reassuring way. 'I'm not given to throwing away money. In fact, the
other people think I'm too much inclined to take it. And why shouldn't
I? People who don't know how to take care of money shouldn't have it.
They do harm with it. It is right to take it from them since they
can't keep it and haven't the sense to spend it properly. However,
that's the business side of me, and we won't talk about it, unless you
like.'

'I don't "like"!' Lady Maud smiled too.

'Precisely. You're not the business side, and you can have anything
you like to ask for. Anything I've got, I mean.'

The beautiful hands were packing the tea-things.

'Anything in reason,' suggested Lady Maud, looking into the shabby
basket.

'I'm not talking about reason,' answered Mr. Van Torp, gouging his
waistcoat pockets with his thick thumbs, and looking at the top of her
old grey felt hat as she bent her head. 'I don't suppose I've done
much good in my life, but maybe you'll do some for me, because you
understand those things and I don't. Anyhow, you mean to, and I want
you to, and that constitutes intention in both parties, which is the
main thing in law. If it happens to give you pleasure, so much the
better. That's why I say you can have anything you like. It's an
unlimited order.'

'Thank you,' said Lady Maud, still busy with the things. 'I know you
are in earnest, and if I needed more money I would ask for it. But
I want to make sure that it is really the right way--so many people
would not think it was, you know, and only time can prove that I'm
not mistaken. There!' She had finished packing the basket, and she
fastened the lid regretfully. 'I'm afraid we must be going. It was
awfully good of you to come!'

'Wasn't it? I'll be just as good again the day after to-morrow, if
you'll ask me!'

'Will you?' rippled the sweet voice pleasantly. 'Then come at the same
time, unless it rains really hard. I'm not afraid of a shower, you
know, and the arch makes a very fair shelter here. I never catch cold,
either.'

She rose, taking up the basket in one hand and shaking down the folds
of her old habit with the other.

'All the same, I'd bring a jacket next time if I were you,' said her
companion, exactly as her mother might have made the suggestion, and
scarcely bestowing a glance on her almost too visibly perfect figure.

The old thoroughbred raised his head as they crossed the sward, and
made two or three steps towards her of his own accord. Her foot rested
a moment on Mr. Van Torp's solid hand, and she was in the saddle. The
black was at first less disposed to be docile, but soon yielded at the
sight of another carrot. Mr. Van Torp did not take the trouble to
put his foot into the stirrup, but vaulted from the ground with no
apparent effort. Lady Maud smiled approvingly, but not as a woman
who loves a man and feels pride in him when he does anything very
difficult. It merely pleased and amused her to see with what ease and
indifference the rather heavily-built American did a thing which many
a good English rider, gentleman or groom, would have found it hard to
do at all. But Mr. Van Torp had ridden and driven cattle in California
for his living before he had been twenty.

He wheeled and came to her side, and held out his hand.

'Day after to-morrow, at the same time,' he said as she took it.
'Good-bye!'

'Good-bye, and don't forget Thursday!'

They parted and rode away in opposite directions, and neither turned,
even once, to look back at the other.




CHAPTER XIII


The _Elisir d'Amore_ was received with enthusiasm, but the tenor
had it all his own way, as Lushington had foretold, and when Pompeo
Stromboli sang 'Una furtiva lacrima' the incomparable Cordova was for
once eclipsed in the eyes of a hitherto faithful public. Covent Garden
surrendered unconditionally. Metaphorically speaking, it rolled over
on its back, with its four paws in the air, like a small dog that has
got the worst of a fight and throws himself on the bigger dog's mercy.

Margaret was applauded, but as a matter of course. There was no
electric thrill in the clapping of hands; she got the formal applause
which is regularly given to the sovereign, but not the enthusiasm
which is bestowed spontaneously on the conqueror. When she buttered
her face and got the paint off, she was a little pale, and her
eyes were not kind. It was the first time that she had not carried
everything before her since she had begun her astonishing career, and
in her first disappointment she had not philosophy enough to console
herself with the consideration that it would have been infinitely
worse to be thrown into the shade by another lyric soprano, instead
of by the most popular lyric tenor on the stage. She was also
uncomfortably aware that Lushington had predicted what had happened,
and she was informed that he had not even taken the trouble to come
to the first performance of the opera. Logotheti, who knew everything
about his old rival, had told her that Lushington was in Paris that
week, and was going on to see his mother in Provence.

The Primadonna was put out with herself and with everybody, after the
manner of great artists when a performance has not gone exactly as
they had hoped. The critics said the next morning that the Señorita da
Cordova had been in good voice and had sung with excellent taste and
judgment, but that was all: as if any decent soprano might not do as
well! They wrote as if she might have been expected to show neither
judgment nor taste, and as if she were threatened with a cold. Then
they went on to praise Pompeo Stromboli with the very words they
usually applied to her. His voice was full, rich, tender, vibrating,
flexible, soft, powerful, stirring, natural, cultivated, superb,
phenomenal, and perfectly fresh. The critics had a severe attack of
'adjectivitis.'

Paul Griggs had first applied the name to that inflammation of
language to which many young writers are subject when cutting their
literary milk-teeth, and from which musical critics are never quite
immune. Margaret could no longer help reading what was written about
her; that was one of the signs of the change that had come over her,
and she disliked it, and sometimes despised herself for it, though
she was quite unable to resist the impulse. The appetite for flattery
which comes of living on it may be innocent, but it is never harmless.
Dante consigned the flatterers to Inferno, and more particularly to a
very nasty place there: it is true that there were no musical critics
in his day; but he does not say much about the flattered, perhaps
because they suffer enough when they find out the truth, or lose the
gift for which they have been over-praised.

The Primadonna was in a detestably uncomfortable state of mind on the
day after the performance of the revived opera. Her dual nature was
hopelessly mixed; Cordova was in a rage with Stromboli, Schreiermeyer,
Baci-Roventi, and the whole company, not to mention Signor Bambinelli
the conductor, the whole orchestra, and the dead composer of the
_Elisir d'Amore_; but Margaret Donne was ashamed of herself for
caring, and for being spoilt, and for bearing poor Lushington a grudge
because he had foretold a result that was only to be expected with
such a tenor as Stromboli; she despised herself for wickedly wishing
that the latter had cracked on the final high note and had made
himself ridiculous. But he had not cracked at all; in imagination she
could hear the note still, tremendous, round, and persistently drawn
out, as if it came out of a tenor trombone and had all the world's
lungs behind it.

In her mortification Cordova was ready to give up lyric opera and
study Wagner, in order to annihilate Pompeo Stromboli, who did not
even venture _Lohengrin_. Schreiermeyer had unkindly told him that if
he arrayed his figure in polished armour he would look like a silver
teapot; and Stromboli was very sensitive to ridicule. Even if he had
possessed a dramatic voice, he could never have bounded about the
stage in pink tights and the exiguous skin of an unknown wild animal
as Siegfried, and in the flower scene of _Parsifal_ he would have
looked like Falstaff in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. But Cordova
could have made herself into a stately Brunhilde, a wild and lovely
Kundry, or a fair and fateful Isolde, with the very least amount of
artificial aid that theatrical illusion admits.

Margaret Donne, disgusted with Cordova, said that her voice was about
as well adapted for one of those parts as a sick girl's might be for
giving orders at sea in a storm. Cordova could not deny this, and fell
back upon the idea of having an opera written for her, expressly to
show off her voice, with a _crescendo_ trill in every scene and a high
D at the end; and Margaret Donne, who loved music for its own sake,
was more disgusted than ever, and took up a book in order to get rid
of her professional self, and tried so hard to read that she almost
gave herself a headache.

Pompeo Stromboli was really the most sweet-tempered creature in the
world, and called during the afternoon with the idea of apologising
for having eclipsed her, but was told that she was resting and would
see no one. Fräulein Ottilie Braun also came, and Margaret would
probably have seen her, but had not given any special orders, so the
kindly little person trotted off, and Margaret knew nothing of her
coming; and the day wore on quickly; and when she wanted to go out, it
at once began to rain furiously; and, at last, in sheer impatience at
everything, she telephoned to Logotheti, asking him to come and dine
alone with her if he felt that he could put up with her temper, which,
she explained, was atrocious. She heard the Greek laugh gaily at the
other end of the wire.

'Will you come?' she asked, impatient that anybody should be in a good
humour when she was not.

'I'll come now, if you'll let me,' he answered readily.

'No. Come to dinner at half-past eight.' She waited a moment and then
went on. 'I've sent down word that I'm not at home for any one, and I
don't like to make you the only exception.'

'Oh, I see,' answered Logotheti's voice. 'But I've always wanted to be
the only exception. I say, does half-past eight mean a quarter past
nine?'

'No. It means a quarter past eight, if you like. Good-bye!'

She cut off the communication abruptly, being a little afraid that if
she let him go on chattering any longer she might yield and allow him
to come at once. In her solitude she was intensely bored by her own
bad temper, and was nearer to making him the 'only exception' than she
had often been of late. She said to herself that he always amused her,
but in her heart she was conscious that he was the only man in the
world who knew how to flatter her back into a good temper, and would
take the trouble to do so. It was better than nothing to look forward
to a pleasant evening, and she went back to her novel and her cup of
tea already half reconciled with life.

It rained almost without stopping. At times it poured, which really
does not happen often in much-abused London; but even heavy rain
is not so depressing in spring as it is in winter, and when the
Primadonna raised her eyes from her book and looked out of the big
window, she was not thinking of the dreariness outside but of what
she should wear in the evening. To tell the truth, she did not often
trouble herself much about that matter when she was not going to sing,
and all singers and actresses who habitually play 'costume parts' are
conscious of looking upon stage-dressing and ordinary dressing from
totally different points of view. By far the larger number of them
have their stage clothes made by a theatrical tailor, and only an
occasional eccentric celebrity goes to Worth or Doucet to be dressed
for a 'Juliet,' a 'Tosca,' or a 'Doña Sol.'

Margaret looked at the rain and decided that Logotheti should not find
her in a tea-gown, not because it would look too intimate, but because
tea-gowns suggest weariness, the state of being misunderstood, and a
craving for sympathy. A woman who is going to surrender to fate puts
on a tea-gown, but a well-fitting body indicates strength of character
and virtuous firmness.

I remember a smart elderly Frenchwoman who always bestowed unusual
care on every detail of her dress, visible and invisible, before going
to church. Her niece was in the room one Sunday while she was dressing
for church, and asked why she took so much trouble.

'My dear,' was the answer, 'Satan is everywhere, and one can never
know what may happen.'

Margaret was very fond of warm greys, and fawn tints, and dove colour,
and she had lately got a very pretty dress that was exactly to her
taste, and was made of a newly invented thin material of pure silk,
which had no sheen and cast no reflections of light, and was slightly
elastic, so that it fitted as no ordinary silk or velvet ever could.
Alphonsine called the gown a 'legend,' but a celebrated painter who
had lately seen it said it was an 'Indian twilight,' which might mean
anything, as Paul Griggs explained, because there is no twilight to
speak of in India. The dress-maker who had made it called the colour
'fawn's stomach,' which was less poetical, and the fabric, 'veil of
nun in love,' which showed little respect for monastic institutions.
As for the way in which the dress was made, it is folly to rush into
competition with tailors and dress-makers, who know what they are
talking about, and are able to say things which nobody can understand.

The plain fact is that the Primadonna began to dress early, out of
sheer boredom, had her thick brown hair done in the most becoming way
in spite of its natural waves, which happened to be unfashionable just
then, and she put on the new gown with all the care and consideration
which so noble a creation deserved.

'Madame is adorable,' observed Alphonsine. 'Madame is a dream. Madame
has only to lift her little finger, and kings will fall into ecstasy
before her.'

'That would be very amusing,' said Margaret, looking at herself in the
glass, and less angry with the world than she had been. 'I have never
seen a king in ecstasy.'

'The fault is Madame's,' returned Alphonsine, possibly with truth.

When Margaret went into the drawing-room Logotheti was already there,
and she felt a thrill of pleasure when his expression changed at sight
of her. It is not easy to affect the pleased surprise which the sudden
appearance of something beautiful brings into the face of a man who is
not expecting anything unusual.

'Oh, I say!' exclaimed the Greek. 'Let me look at you!'

And instead of coming forward to take her hand, he stepped back in
order not to lose anything of the wonderful effect by being too near.
Margaret stood still and smiled in the peculiar way which is a woman's
equivalent for a cat's purring. Then, to Logotheti's still greater
delight, she slowly turned herself round, to be admired, like a statue
on a pivoted pedestal, quite regardless of a secret consciousness that
Margaret Donne would not have done such a thing for him, and probably
not for any other man.

'You're really too utterly stunning!' he cried.

In moments of enthusiasm he sometimes out-Englished Englishmen.

'I'm glad you like it,' Margaret said. 'This is the first time I've
worn it.'

'If you put it on for me, thank you! If not, thank you for putting it
on! I'm not asking, either. I should think you would wear it if you
were alone for the mere pleasure of feeling like a goddess.'

'You're very nice!'

She was satisfied, and for a moment she forgot Pompeo Stromboli, the
_Elisir d'Amore_, the public, and the critics. It was particularly
'nice' of him, too, not to insist upon being told that she had put on
the new creation solely for his benefit. Next to not assuming rashly
that a woman means anything of the sort expressly for him, it is wise
of a man to know when she really does, without being told. At least,
so Margaret thought just then; but it is true that she wanted him to
amuse her and was willing to be pleased.

She executed the graceful swaying movement which only a well-made
woman can make just before sitting down for the first time in a
perfectly new gown. It is a slightly serpentine motion; and as there
is nothing to show that Eve did not meet the Serpent again after she
had taken to clothes, she may have learnt the trick from him. There is
certainly something diabolical about it when it is well done.

Logotheti's almond-shaped eyes watched her quietly, and he stood
motionless till she was established on her chair. Then he seated
himself at a little distance.

'I hope I was not rude,' he said, in artful apology, 'but it's not
often that one's breath is taken away by what one sees. Horrid weather
all day, wasn't it? Have you been out at all?'

'No. I've been moping. I told you that I was in a bad humour, but I
don't want to talk about it now that I feel better. What have you been
doing? Tell me all sorts of amusing things, where you have been, whom
you have seen, and what people said to you.'

'That might be rather dull,' observed the Greek.

'I don't believe it. You are always in the thick of everything that's
happening.'

'We have agreed to-day to lend Russia some more money. But that
doesn't interest you, does it? There's to be a European conference
about the Malay pirates, but there's nothing very funny in that. It
would be more amusing to hear the pirates' view of Europeans. Let me
see. Some one has discovered a conspiracy in Italy against Austria,
and there is another in Austria against the Italians. They are the
same old plots that were discovered six months ago, but people had
forgotten about them, so they are as good as new. Then there is the
sad case of that Greek.'

'What Greek? I've not heard about that. What has happened to him?'

'Oh, nothing much. It's only a love-story--the same old thing.'

'Tell me.'

'Not now, for we shall have to go to dinner just when I get to
the most thrilling part of it, I'm sure.' Logotheti laughed. 'And
besides,' he added, 'the man isn't dead yet, though he's not expected
to live. I'll tell you about your friend Mr. Feist instead. He has
been very ill too.'

'I would much rather know about the Greek love-story,' Margaret
objected. 'I never heard of Mr. Feist.'

She had quite forgotten the man's existence, but Logotheti recalled
to her memory the circumstances under which they had met, and Feist's
unhealthy face with its absurdly youthful look, and what he had
said about having been at the Opera in New York on the night of the
explosion.

'Why do you tell me all this?' Margaret asked. 'He was a
disgusting-looking man, and I never wish to see him again. Tell me
about the Greek. When we go to dinner you can finish the story in
French. We spoke French the first time we met, at Madame Bonanni's. Do
you remember?'

'Yes, of course I do. But I was telling you about Mr. Feist--'

'Dinner is ready,' Margaret said, rising as the servant opened the
door.

To her surprise the man came forward. He said that just as he was
going to announce dinner Countess Leven had telephoned that she was
dining out, and would afterwards stop on her way to the play in the
hope of seeing Margaret for a moment. She had seemed to be in a hurry,
and had closed the communication before the butler could answer. And
dinner was served, he added.

Margaret nodded carelessly, and the two went into the dining-room.
Lady Maud could not possibly come before half-past nine, and there was
plenty of time to decide whether she should be admitted or not.

'Mr. Feist has been very ill,' Logotheti said as they sat down to
table under the pleasant light, 'and I have been taking care of him,
after a fashion.'

Margaret raised her eyebrows a little, for she was beginning to be
annoyed at his persistency, and was not much pleased at the prospect
of Lady Maud's visit.

'How very odd!' she said, rather coldly. 'I cannot imagine anything
more disagreeable.'

'It has been very unpleasant,' Logotheti answered, 'but he seemed to
have no particular friends here, and he was all alone at an hotel, and
really very ill. So I volunteered.'

'I've no objection to being moderately sorry for a young man who falls
ill at an hotel and has no friends,' Margaret said, 'but are you going
in for nursing? Is that your latest hobby? It's a long way from art,
and even from finance!'

'Isn't it?'

'Yes. I'm beginning to be curious!'

'I thought you would be before long,' Logotheti answered coolly, but
suddenly speaking French. 'One of the most delightful things in life
is to have one's curiosity roused and then satisfied by very slow
degrees!'

'Not too slow, please. The interest might not last to the end.'

'Oh yes, it will, for Mr. Feist plays a part in your life.'

'About as distant as Voltaire's Chinese Mandarin, I fancy,' Margaret
suggested.

'Nearer than that, though I did not guess it when I went to see him.
In the first place, it was owing to you that I went to see him the
first time.'

'Nonsense!'

'Not at all. Everything that happens to me is connected with you in
some way. I came to see you late in the afternoon, on one of your
off-days not long ago, hoping that you would ask me to dine, but you
were across the river at Lord Creedmore's. I met old Griggs at your
door, and as we walked away he told me that Mr. Feist had fallen down
in a fit at a club, the night before, and had been sent home in a cab
to the Carlton. As I had nothing to do, worth doing, I went to see
him. If you had been at home, I should never have gone. That is what I
mean when I say that you were the cause of my going to see him.'

'In the same way, if you had been killed by a motor-car as you went
away from my door, I should have been the cause of your death!'

'You will be in any case,' laughed Logotheti, 'but that's a detail! I
found Mr. Feist in a very bad way.'

'What was the matter with him?' asked Margaret.

'He was committing suicide,' answered the Greek with the utmost calm.
'If I were in Constantinople I should tell you that this turbot is
extremely good, but as we are in London I suppose it would be very bad
manners to say so, wouldn't it? So I am thinking it.'

'Take the fish for granted, and tell me more about Mr. Feist!'

'I found him standing before the glass with a razor in his hand and
quite near his throat. When he saw me he tried to laugh and said he
was just going to shave; I asked him if he generally shaved without
soap and water, and he burst into tears.'

'That's rather dreadful,' observed Margaret. 'What did you do?'

'I saved his life, but I don't think he's very grateful yet. Perhaps
he may be by and by. When he stopped sobbing he tried to kill me for
hindering his destruction, but I had got the razor in my pocket, and
his revolver missed fire. That was lucky, for he managed to stick the
muzzle against my chest and pull the trigger just as I got him down.
I wished I had brought old Griggs with me, for they say he can bend a
good horse-shoe double, even now, and the fellow had the strength of
a lunatic in him. It was rather lively for a few seconds, and then he
broke down again, and was as limp as a rag, and trembled with fright,
as if he saw queer things in the room.'

'You sent for a doctor then?'

'My own, and we took care of him together that night. You may laugh at
the idea of my having a doctor, as I never was ill in my life. I have
him to dine with me now and then, because he is such good company, and
is the best judge of a statue or a picture I know. The habit of taking
the human body to pieces teaches you a great deal about the shape of
it, you see. In the morning we moved Mr. Feist from the hotel to a
small private hospital where cases of that sort are treated. Of course
he was perfectly helpless, so we packed his belongings and papers.'

'It was really very kind of you to act the Good Samaritan to
a stranger,' Margaret said, but her tone showed that she was
disappointed at the tame ending of the story.

'No,' Logotheti answered. 'I was never consciously kind, as you call
it. It's not a Greek characteristic to love one's neighbour as one's
self. Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Latins, and, most of all, Asiatics, are
charitable, but the old Greeks were not. I don't believe you'll find
an instance of a charitable act in all Greek history, drama, and
biography! If you did find one I should only say that the exception
proves the rule. Charity was left out of us at the beginning, and we
never could understand it, except as a foreign sentiment imported with
Christianity from Asia. We have had every other virtue, including
hospitality. In the _Iliad_ a man declines to kill his enemy on the
ground that their people had dined together, which is going rather
far, but it is not recorded that any ancient Greek, even Socrates
himself, ever felt pity or did an act of spontaneous kindness! I don't
believe any one has said that, but it's perfectly true.'

'Then why did you take all that trouble for Mr. Feist?'

'I don't know. People who always know why they do things are great
bores. It was probably a caprice that took me to see him, and then
it did not occur to me to let him cut his throat, so I took away his
razor; and, finally, I telephoned for my doctor, because my misspent
life has brought me into contact with Western civilisation. But when
we began to pack Mr. Feist's papers I became interested in him.'

'Do you mean to say that you read his letters?' Margaret inquired.

'Why not? If I had let him kill himself, somebody would have read
them, as he had not taken the trouble to destroy them!'

'That's a singular point of view.'

'So was Mr. Feist's, as it turned out. I found enough to convince me
that he is the writer of all those articles about Van Torp, including
the ones in which you are mentioned. The odd thing about it is that I
found a very friendly invitation from Van Torp himself, begging Mr.
Feist to go down to Derbyshire and stop a week with him.'

Margaret leaned back in her chair and looked at her guest in quiet
surprise.

'What does that mean?' she asked. 'Is it possible that Mr. Van Torp
has got up this campaign against himself in order to play some trick
on the Stock Exchange?'

Logotheti smiled and shook his head.

'That's not the way such things are usually managed,' he answered. 'A
hundred years ago a publisher paid a critic to attack a book in order
to make it succeed, but in finance abuse doesn't contribute to our
success, which is always a question of credit. All these scurrilous
articles have set the public very much against Van Torp, from Paris
to San Francisco, and this man Feist is responsible for them. He is
either insane, or he has some grudge against Van Torp, or else he has
been somebody's instrument, which looks the most probable.'

'What did you find amongst his papers?' Margaret asked, quite
forgetting her vicarious scruples about reading a sick man's letters.

'A complete set of the articles that have appeared, all neatly filed,
and a great many notes for more, besides a lot of stuff written in
cypher. It must be a diary, for the days are written out in full and
give the days of the week.'

'I wonder whether there was anything about the explosion,' said
Margaret thoughtfully. 'He said he was there, did he not?'

'Yes. Do you remember the day?'

'It was a Wednesday, I'm sure, and it was after the middle of March.
My maid can tell us, for she writes down the date and the opera in a
little book each time I sing. It's sometimes very convenient. But it's
too late now, of course, and, besides, you could not have read the
cypher.'

'That's an easy matter,' Logotheti answered. 'All cyphers can be read
by experts, if there is no hurry, except the mechanical ones that are
written through holes in a square plate which you turn round till the
sheet is full. Hardly any one uses those now, because when the square
is raised the letters don't form words, and the cable companies will
only transmit real words in some known language, or groups of figures.
The diary is written hastily, too, not at all as if it were copied
from the sheet on which the perforated plate would have had to be
used, and besides, the plate itself would be amongst his things, for
he could not read his own notes without it.'

'All that doesn't help us, as you have not the diary, but I should
really be curious to know what he had to say about the accident, since
some of the articles hint that Mr. Van Torp made it happen.'

'My doctor and I took the liberty of confiscating the papers, and we
set a very good man to work on the cypher at once. So your curiosity
shall be satisfied. I said it should, didn't I? And you are not so
dreadfully bored after all, are you? Do say that I'm very nice!'

'I won't!' Margaret answered with a little laugh. 'I'll only admit
that I'm not bored! But wasn't it rather a high-handed proceeding to
carry off Mr. Feist like that, and to seize his papers?'

'Do you call it high-handed to keep a man from cutting his throat?'

'But the letters--?'

'I really don't know. I had not time to ask a lawyer's opinion, and so
I had to be satisfied with my doctor's.'

'Are you going to tell Mr. Van Torp what you've done?'

'I don't know. Why should I? You may if you like.'

Logotheti was eating a very large and excellent truffle, and after
each short sentence he cut off a tiny slice and put it into his
mouth. The Primadonna had already finished hers, and watched him
thoughtfully.

'I'm not likely to see him,' she said. 'At least, I hope not!'

'My interest in Mr. Feist,' answered Logotheti, 'begins and ends with
what concerns you. Beyond that I don't care a straw what happens to
Mr. Van Torp, or to any one else. To all intents and purposes I have
got the author of the stories locked up, for a man who has consented
to undergo treatment for dipsomania in a private hospital, by the
advice of his friends and under the care of a doctor with a great
reputation, is as really in prison as if he were in gaol. Legally, he
can get out, but in real fact nobody will lift a hand to release him,
because he is shut up for his own good and for the good of the public,
just as much as if he were a criminal. Feist may have friends or
relations in America, and they may come and claim him; but as there
seems to be nobody in London who cares what becomes of him, it pleases
me to keep him in confinement, because I mean to prevent any further
mention of your name in connection with the Van Torp scandals.'

His eyes rested on Margaret as he spoke, and lingered afterwards, with
a look that did not escape her. She had seen him swayed by passion,
more than once, and almost mad for her, and she had been frightened
though she had dominated him. What she saw in his face now was not
that; it was more like affection, faithful and lasting, and it touched
her English nature much more than any show of passion could.

'Thank you,' she said quietly.

They did not talk much more while they finished the short dinner, but
when they were going back to the drawing-room Margaret took his arm,
in foreign fashion, which she had never done before when they were
alone. Then he stood before the mantelpiece and watched her in silence
as she moved about the room; for she was one of those women who always
find half a dozen little things to do as soon as they get back from
dinner, and go from place to place, moving a reading lamp half an inch
farther from the edge of a table, shutting a book that has been left
open on another, tearing up a letter that lies on the writing-desk,
and slightly changing the angle at which a chair stands. It is an odd
little mania, and the more people there are in the room the less the
mistress of the house yields to it, and the more uncomfortable she
feels at being hindered from 'tidying up the room,' as she probably
calls it.

Logotheti watched Margaret with keen pleasure, as every step and
little movement showed her figure in a slightly different attitude and
light, indiscreetly moulded in the perfection of her matchless gown.
In less than two minutes she had finished her trip round the room and
was standing beside him, her elbows resting on the mantelpiece, while
she moved a beautiful Tanagra a little to one side and then to the
other, trying for the twentieth time how it looked the best.

'There is no denying it,' Logotheti said at last, with profound
conviction. 'I do not care a straw what becomes of any living creature
but you.'

She did not turn her head, and her fingers still touched the Tanagra,
but he saw the rare blush spread up the cheek that was turned to him;
and because she stopped moving the statuette about, and looked at it
intently, he guessed that she was not colouring from annoyance at what
he had said. She blushed so very seldom now, that it might mean much
more than in the old days at Versailles.

'I did not think it would last so long,' she said gently, after a
little while.

'What faith can one expect of a Greek!'

He laughed, too wise in woman's ways to be serious too long just then.
But she shook her head and turned to him with the smile he loved.

'I thought it was something different,' she said. 'I was mistaken. I
believed you had only lost your head for a while, and would soon run
after some one else. That's all.'

'And the loss is permanent. That's all!' He laughed again as he
repeated her words. 'You thought it was "something different"--do you
know that you are two people in one?'

She looked a little surprised.

'Indeed I do!' she answered rather sadly. 'Have you found it out?'

'Yes. You are Margaret Donne and you are Cordova. I admire Cordova
immensely, I am extremely fond of Margaret, and I'm in love with both.
Oh yes! I'm quite frank about it, and it's very unlucky, for whichever
one of your two selves I meet I'm just as much in love as ever!
Absurd, isn't it?'

'It's flattering, at all events.'

'If you ever took it into your handsome head to marry me--please, I'm
only saying "if"--the absurdity would be rather reassuring, wouldn't
it? When a man is in love with two women at the same time, it really
is a little unlikely that he should fall in love with a third!'

'Mr. Griggs says that marriage is a drama which only succeeds if
people preserve the unities!'

'Griggs is always trying to coax the Djin back into the bottle, like
the fisherman in the _Arabian Nights_,' answered Logotheti. 'He has
read Kant till he believes that the greatest things in the world can
be squeezed into a formula of ten words, or nailed up amongst the
Categories like a dead owl over a stable door. My intelligence, such
as it is, abhors definitions!'

'So do I. I never understand them.'

'Besides, you can only define what you know from past experience
and can reflect upon coolly, and that is not my position, nor yours
either.'

Margaret nodded, but said nothing and sat down.

'Do you want to smoke?' she asked. 'You may, if you like. I don't mind
a cigarette.'

'No, thank you.'

'But I assure you I don't mind it in the least. It never hurts my
throat.'

'Thanks, but I really don't want to.'

'I'm sure you do. Please--'

'Why do you insist? You know I never smoke when you are in the room.'

'I don't like to be the object of little sacrifices that make people
uncomfortable.'

'I'm not uncomfortable, but if you have any big sacrifice to suggest,
I promise to offer it at once.'

'Unconditionally?' Margaret smiled. 'Anything I ask?'

'Yes. Do you want my statue?'

'The Aphrodite? Would you give her to me?'

'Yes. May I telegraph to have her packed and brought here from Paris?'

He was already at the writing-table looking for a telegraph form.
Margaret watched his face, for she knew that he valued the wonderful
statue far beyond all his treasures, both for its own sake and because
he had nearly lost his life in carrying it off from Samos, as has been
told elsewhere.

As Margaret said nothing, he began to write the message. She really
had not had any idea of testing his willingness to part with the thing
he valued most, at her slightest word, and was taken by surprise;
but it was impossible not to be pleased when she saw that he was in
earnest. In her present mood, too, it restored her sense of power,
which had been rudely shaken by the attitude of the public on the
previous evening.

It took some minutes to compose the message.

'It's only to save time by having the box ready,' he said, as he rose
with the bit of paper in his hand. 'Of course I shall see the statue
packed myself and come over with it.'

She saw his face clearly in the light as he came towards her, and
there was no mistaking the unaffected satisfaction it expressed. He
held out the telegram for her to read, but she would not take it, and
she looked up quietly and earnestly as he stood beside her.

'Do you remember Delorges?' she asked. 'How the lady tossed her glove
amongst the lions and bade him fetch it, if he loved her, and how he
went in and got it--and then threw it in her face? I feel like her.'

Logotheti looked at her blankly.

'Do you mean to say you won't take the statue?' he asked in a
disappointed tone.

'No, indeed! I was taken by surprise when you went to the
writing-table.'

'You did not believe I was in earnest? Don't you see that I'm
disappointed now?' His voice changed a little. 'Don't you understand
that if the world were mine I should want to give it all to you?'

'And don't you understand that the wish may be quite as much to me as
the deed? That sounds commonplace, I know. I would say it better if I
could.'

She folded her hands on her knee, and looked at them thoughtfully
while he sat down beside her.

'You say it well enough,' he answered after a little pause. 'The
trouble lies there. The wish is all you will ever take. I have
submitted to that; but if you ever change your mind, please remember
that I have not changed mine. For two years I've done everything I can
to make you marry me whether you would or not, and you've forgiven me
for trying to carry you off against your will, and for several other
things, but you are no nearer to caring for me ever so little than you
were the first day we met. You "like" me! That's the worst of it!'

'I'm not so sure of that,' Margaret answered, raising her eyes for a
moment and then looking at her hands again.

He turned his head slowly, but there was a startled look in his eyes.

'Do you feel as if you could hate me a little, for a change?' he
asked.

'No.'

'There's only one other thing,' he said in a low voice.

'Perhaps,' Margaret answered, in an even lower tone than his. 'I'm not
quite sure to-day.'

Logotheti had known her long, and he now resisted the strong impulse
to reach out and take the hand she would surely have let him hold in
his for a moment. She was not disappointed because he neither
spoke nor moved, nor took any sudden advantage of her rather timid
admission, for his silence made her trust him more than any passionate
speech or impulsive action could have done.

'I daresay I am wrong to tell you even that much,' she went on
presently, 'but I do so want to play fair. I've always despised women
who cannot make up their minds whether they care for a man or not. But
you have found out my secret; I am two people in one, and there
are days when each makes the other dreadfully uncomfortable! You
understand.'

'And it's the Cordova that neither likes me nor hates me just at this
moment,' suggested Logotheti. 'Margaret Donne sometimes hates me and
sometimes likes me, and on some days she can be quite indifferent too!
Is that it?'

'Yes. That's it.'

'The only question is, which of you is to be mistress of the house,'
said Logotheti, smiling, 'and whether it is to be always the same one,
or if there is to be a perpetual hide-and-seek between them!'

'Box and Cox,' suggested Margaret, glad of the chance to say something
frivolous just then.

'I should say Hera and Aphrodite,' answered the Greek, 'if it did not
look like comparing myself to Adonis!'

'It sounds better than Box and Cox, but I have forgotten my
mythology.'

'Hera and Aphrodite agreed that each should keep Adonis one-third of
the year, and that he should have the odd four months to himself. Now
that you are the Cordova, if you could come to some such understanding
about me with Miss Donne, it would be very satisfactory. But I am
afraid Margaret does not want even a third of me!'

Logotheti felt that it was rather ponderous fun, but he was in such an
anxious state that his usually ready wit did not serve him very well.
For the first time since he had known her, Margaret had confessed that
she might possibly fall in love with him; and after what had passed
between them in former days, he knew that the smallest mistake on his
part would now be fatal to the realisation of such a possibility. He
was not afraid of being dull, or of boring her, but he was afraid of
wakening against him the wary watchfulness of that side of her nature
which he called Margaret Donne, as distinguished from Cordova, of the
'English-girl' side, of the potential old maid that is dormant in
every young northern woman until the day she marries, and wakes to
torment her like a biblical devil if she does not. There is no miser
like a reformed spendthrift, and no ascetic will go to such extremes
of self-mortification as a converted libertine; in the same way, there
are no such portentously virginal old maids as those who might have
been the most womanly wives; the opposite is certainly true also, for
the variety 'Hemiparthenos,' studied after nature by Marcel Prévost,
generally makes an utter failure of matrimony, and becomes, in fact,
little better than a half-wife.

Logotheti took it as a good sign that Margaret laughed at what he
said. He was in the rather absurd position of wishing to leave her
while she was in her present humour, lest anything should disturb it
and destroy his advantage; yet, after what had just passed, it
was next to impossible not to talk of her, or of himself. He had
exceptionally good nerves, he was generally cool to a fault, and he
had the daring that makes great financiers. But what looked like the
most important crisis of his life had presented itself unexpectedly
within a few minutes; a success which he reckoned far beyond all
other successes was almost within his grasp, and he felt that he was
unprepared. For the first time he did not know what to say to a woman.

Happily for him, Margaret helped him unexpectedly.

'I shall have to see Lady Maud,' she said, 'and you must either go
when she comes or leave with her. I'm sorry, but you understand, don't
you?'

'Of course. I'll go a moment after she comes. When am I to see you
again? To-morrow? You are not to sing again this week, are you?'

'No,' the Primadonna answered vaguely, 'I believe not.'

She was thinking of something else. She was wondering whether
Logotheti would wish her to give up the stage, if by any possibility
she ever married him, and her thoughts led her on quickly to the
consideration of what that would mean, and to asking herself what sort
of sacrifice it would really mean to her. For the recollection of the
_Elisir d'Amore_ awoke and began to rankle again just then.

Logotheti did not press her for an answer, but watched her cautiously
while her eyes were turned away from him. At that moment he felt like
a tamer who had just succeeded in making a tiger give its paw for the
first time, and has not the smallest idea whether the creature will do
it again or bite off his head.

She, on her side, being at the moment altogether the artist, was
thinking that it would be pleasant to enjoy a few more triumphs, to
make the tour of Europe with a company of her own--which is always the
primadonna's dream as it is the actress's--and to leave the stage
at twenty-five in a blaze of glory, rather than to risk one more
performance of the opera she now hated. She knew quite well that
it was not at all an impossibility. To please her, and with the
expectation of marrying her in six months, Logotheti would cheerfully
pay the large forfeit that would be due to Schreiermeyer if she broke
her London engagement at the height of the season, and the Greek
financier would produce all the ready money necessary for getting
together an opera company. The rest would be child's play, she was
sure, and she would make a triumphant progress through the capitals of
Europe which should be remembered for half a century. After that, said
the Primadonna to herself, she would repay her friend all the money he
had lent her, and would then decide at her leisure whether she would
marry him or not. For one moment her cynicism would have surprised
even Schreiermeyer; the next, the Primadonna herself was ashamed of
it, quite independently of what her better self might have thought.

Besides, it was certainly not for his money that her old inclination
for Logotheti had begun to grow again. She could say so, truly enough,
and when she felt sure of it she turned her eyes to see his face.

She did not admire him for his looks, either. So far as appearance was
concerned, she preferred Lushington, with his smooth hair and fair
complexion. Logotheti was a handsome and showy Oriental, that was all,
and she knew instinctively that the type must be common in the East.
What attracted her was probably his daring masculineness, which
contrasted so strongly with Lushington's quiet and rather bashful
manliness. The Englishman would die for a cause and make no noise
about it, which would be heroic; but the Greek would run away with a
woman he loved, at the risk of breaking his neck, which was romantic
in the extreme. It is not easy to be a romantic character in the eyes
of a lady who lives on the stage, and by it, and constantly gives
utterance to the most dramatic sentiments at a pitch an octave higher
than any one else; but Logotheti had succeeded. There never was a
woman yet to whom that sort of thing has not appealed once; for one
moment she has felt everything whirling with her as if the centre of
gravity had gone mad, and the Ten Commandments might drop out of the
solid family Bible and get lost. That recollection is probably the
only secret of a virtuously colourless existence, but she hides it,
like a treasure or a crime, until she is an old and widowed woman;
and one day, at last, she tells her grown-up granddaughter, with a
far-away smile, that there was once a man whose eyes and voice stirred
her strongly, and for whom she might have quite lost her head. But she
never saw him again, and that is the end of the little story; and the
tall girl in her first season thinks it rather dull.

But it was not likely that the chronicle of Cordova's youth should
come to such an abrupt conclusion. The man who moved her now had been
near her too often, the sound of his voice was too easily recalled,
and, since his rival's defection, he was too necessary to her; and,
besides, he was as obstinate as Christopher Columbus.

'Let me see,' she said thoughtfully. 'There's a rehearsal to-morrow
morning. That means a late luncheon. Come at two o'clock, and if it's
fine we can go for a little walk. Will you?'

'Of course. Thank you.'

He had hardly spoken the words when a servant opened the door and Lady
Maud came in. She had not dropped the opera cloak she wore over her
black velvet gown; she was rather pale, and the look in her eyes told
that something was wrong, but her serenity did not seem otherwise
affected. She kissed Margaret and gave her hand to Logotheti.

'We dined early to go to the play,' she said, 'and as there's a
curtain-raiser, I thought I might as well take a hansom and join them
later.'

She seated herself beside Margaret on one of those little sofas that
are measured to hold two women when the fashions are moderate, and are
wide enough for a woman and one man, whatever happens. Indeed they
must be, since otherwise no one would tolerate them in a drawing-room.
When two women instal themselves in one, and a man is present, it
means that he is to go away, because they are either going to make
confidences or are going to fight.

Logotheti thought it would be simpler and more tactful to go at once,
since Lady Maud was in a hurry, having stopped on her way to the play,
presumably in the hope of seeing Margaret alone. To his surprise she
asked him to stay; but as he thought she might be doing this out of
mere civility he said he had an engagement.

'Will it keep for ten minutes?' asked Lady Maud gravely.

'Engagements of that sort are very convenient. They will keep any
length of time.'

Logotheti sat down again, smiling, but he wondered what Lady Maud was
going to say, and why she wished him to remain.

'It will save a note,' she said, by way of explanation. 'My father
and I want you to come to Craythew for the week-end after this,' she
continued, turning to Margaret. 'We are asking several people, so it
won't be too awfully dull, I hope. Will you come?'

'With pleasure,' answered the singer.

'And you too?' Lady Maud looked at Logotheti.

'Delighted--most kind of you,' he replied, somewhat surprised by the
invitation, for he had never met Lord and Lady Creedmore. 'May I take
you down in my motor?' he spoke to Margaret. 'I think I can do it
under four hours. I'm my own chauffeur, you know.'

'Yes, I know,' Margaret answered with a rather malicious smile. 'No,
thank you!'

'Does he often kill?' inquired Lady Maud coolly.

'I should be more afraid of a runaway,' Margaret said.

'Get that new German brake,' suggested Lady Maud, not understanding at
all. 'It's quite the best I've seen. Come on Friday, if you can. You
don't mind meeting Mr. Van Torp, do you? He is our neighbour, you
remember.'

The question was addressed to Margaret, who made a slight movement and
unconsciously glanced at Logotheti before she answered.

'Not at all,' she said.

'There's a reason for asking him when there are other people. I'm
not divorced after all--you had not heard? It will be in the _Times_
to-morrow morning. The Patriarch of Constantinople turns out to be a
very sensible sort of person.'

'He's my uncle,' observed Logotheti.

'Is he? But that wouldn't account for it, would it? He refused to
believe what my husband called the evidence, and dismissed the suit.
As the trouble was all about Mr. Van Torp my father wants people to
see him at Craythew. That's the story in a nutshell, and if any of you
like me you'll be nice to him.'

She leaned back in her corner of the little sofa and looked first at
one and then at the other in an inquiring way, but as if she were
fairly sure of the answer.

'Every one likes you,' said Logotheti quietly, 'and every one will be
nice to him.'

'Of course,' chimed in Margaret.

She could say nothing else, though her intense dislike of the American
millionaire almost destroyed the anticipated pleasure of her visit to
Derbyshire.

'I thought it just as well to explain,' said Lady Maud.

She was still pale, and in spite of her perfect outward coolness and
self-reliance her eyes would have betrayed her anxiety if she had not
managed them with the unconscious skill of a woman of the world who
has something very important to hide. Logotheti broke the short
silence that followed her last speech.

'I think you ought to know something I have been telling Miss Donne,'
he said simply. 'I've found the man who wrote all those articles, and
I've locked him up.'

Lady Maud leaned forward so suddenly that her loosened opera-cloak
slipped down behind her, leaving her neck and shoulders bare. Her eyes
were wide open in her surprise, the pupils very dark.

'Where?' she asked breathlessly. 'Where is he? In prison?'

'In a more convenient and accessible place,' answered the Greek.

He had known Lady Maud some time, but he had never seen her in the
least disturbed, or surprised, or otherwise moved by anything. It was
true that he had only met her in society.

He told the story of Mr. Feist, as Margaret had heard it during
dinner, and Lady Maud did not move, even to lean back in her seat
again, till he had finished. She scarcely seemed to breathe, and
Logotheti felt her steady gaze on him, and would have sworn that
through all those minutes she did not even wink. When he ceased
speaking she drew a long breath and sank back to her former attitude;
but he saw that her white neck heaved suddenly again and again, and
her delicate nostrils quivered once or twice. For a little while there
was silence in the room. Then Lady Maud rose to go.

'I must be going too,' said Logotheti.

Margaret was a little sorry that she had given him such precise
instructions, but did not contradict herself by asking him to stay
longer. She promised Lady Maud again to be at Craythew on Friday of
the next week if possible, and certainly on Saturday, and Lady Maud
and Logotheti went out together.

'Get in with me,' she said quietly, as he helped her into her hansom.

He obeyed, and as he sat down she told the cabman to take her to the
Haymarket Theatre. Logotheti expected her to speak, for he was quite
sure that she had not taken him with her without a purpose; the more
so, as she had not even asked him where he was going.

Three or four minutes passed before he heard her voice asking him a
question, very low, as if she feared to be overheard.

'Is there any way of making that man tell the truth against his will?
You have lived in the East, and you must know about such things.'

Logotheti turned his almond-shaped eyes slowly towards her, but he
could not see her face well, for it was not very light in the broad
West End street. She was white; that was all he could make out. But he
understood what she meant.

'There is a way,' he answered slowly and almost sternly. 'Why do you
ask?'

'Mr. Van Torp is going to be accused of murder. That man knows who did
it. Will you help me?'

It seemed an age before the answer to her whispered question came.

'Yes.'




CHAPTER XIV


When Logotheti and his doctor had taken Mr. Feist away from the hotel,
to the no small satisfaction of the management, they had left precise
instructions for forwarding the young man's letters and for informing
his friends, if any appeared, as to his whereabouts. But Logotheti had
not given his own name.

Sir Jasper Threlfall had chosen for their patient a private
establishment in Ealing, owned and managed by a friend of his, a place
for the treatment of morphia mania, opium-eating, and alcoholism.

To all intents and purposes, as Logotheti had told Margaret,
Charles Feist might as well have been in gaol. Every one knows how
indispensable it is that persons who consent to be cured of drinking
or taking opium, or whom it is attempted to cure, should be absolutely
isolated, if only to prevent weak and pitying friends from yielding
to their heart-rending entreaties for the favourite drug and bringing
them 'just a little'; for their eloquence is often extraordinary, and
their ingenuity in obtaining what they want is amazing.

So Mr. Feist was shut up in a pleasant room provided with double doors
and two strongly barred windows that overlooked a pretty garden,
beyond which there was a high brick wall half covered by a bright
creeper, then just beginning to flower. The walls, the doors, the
ceiling, and the floor were sound-proof, and the garden could not in
any way be reached without passing through the house.

As only male patients were received, the nurses and attendants were
all men; for the treatment needed more firmness and sometimes strength
than gentleness. It was uncompromising, as English methods often are.
Except where life was actually in danger, there was no drink and no
opium for anybody; when absolutely necessary the resident doctor
gave the patient hypodermics or something which he called by an
unpronounceable name, lest the sufferer should afterwards try to buy
it; he smilingly described it as a new vegetable poison, and in fact
it was nothing but dionine, a preparation of opium that differs but
little from ordinary morphia.

Now Sir Jasper Threlfall was a very great doctor indeed, and his
name commanded respect in London at large and inspired awe in the
hospitals. Even the profession admitted reluctantly that he did
not kill more patients than he cured, which is something for one
fashionable doctor to say of another; for the regular answer to any
inquiry about a rival practitioner is a smile--'a smile more dreadful
than his own dreadful frown'--an indescribable smile, a meaning smile,
a smile that is a libel in itself.

It had been an act of humanity to take the young man into medical
custody, as it were, and it had been more or less necessary for the
safety of the public, for Logotheti and the doctor had found him in a
really dangerous state, as was amply proved by his attempting to cut
his own throat and then to shoot Logotheti himself. Sir Jasper said he
had nothing especial the matter with him except drink, that when
his nerves had recovered their normal tone his real character would
appear, so that it would then be possible to judge more or less
whether he had will enough to control himself in future. Logotheti
agreed, but it occurred to him that one need not be knighted, and
write a dozen or more mysterious capital letters after one's name, and
live in Harley Street, in order to reach such a simple conclusion; and
as Logotheti was a millionaire, and liked his doctor for his own sake
rather than for his skill, he told him this, and they both laughed
heartily. Almost all doctors, except those in French plays, have some
sense of humour.

On the third day Isidore Bamberger came to the door of the private
hospital and asked to see Mr. Feist. Not having heard from him, he had
been to the hotel and had there obtained the address. The doorkeeper
was a quiet man who had lost a leg in South Africa, after having been
otherwise severely wounded five times in previous engagements. Mr.
Bamberger, he said, could not see his friend yet. A part of the cure
consisted in complete isolation from friends during the first stages
of the treatment. Sir Jasper Threlfall had been to see Mr. Feist that
morning. He had been twice already. Dr. Bream, the resident physician,
gave the doorkeeper a bulletin every morning at ten for the benefit of
each patient's friend; the notes were written on a card which the man
held in his hand.

At the great man's name, Mr. Bamberger became thoughtful. A smart
brougham drove up just then and a tall woman, who wore a thick veil,
got out and entered the vestibule where Bamberger was standing by the
open door. The doorkeeper evidently knew her, for he glanced at his
notes and spoke without being questioned.

'The young gentleman is doing well this week, my lady,' he said.
'Sleeps from three to four hours at a time. Is less excited. Appetite
improving.'

'Can I see him?' asked a sad and gentle voice through the veil.

'Not yet, my lady.'

She sighed as she turned to go out, and Mr. Bamberger thought it
was one of the saddest sighs he had ever heard. He was rather a
soft-hearted man.

'Is it her son?' he asked, in a respectful sort of way.

'Yes, sir.'

'Drink?' inquired Mr. Bamberger in the same tone.

'Not allowed to give any information except to family or friends,
sir,' answered the man. 'Rule of the house, sir. Very strict.'

'Quite right, of course. Excuse me for asking. But I must see Mr.
Feist, unless he's out of his mind. It's very important.'

'Dr. Bream sees visitors himself from ten to twelve, sir, after he's
been his rounds to the patients' rooms. You'll have to get permission
from him.'

'But it's like a prison!' exclaimed Mr. Bamberger.

'Yes, sir,' answered the old soldier imperturbably. 'It's just like a
prison. It's meant to be.'

It was evidently impossible to get anything more out of the man, who
did not pay the slightest attention to the cheerful little noise Mr.
Bamberger made by jingling sovereigns in his waistcoat pocket; there
was nothing to do but to go away, and Mr. Bamberger went out very much
annoyed and perplexed.

He knew Van Torp well, or believed that he did, and it was like
the man whose genius had created the Nickel Trust to have boldly
sequestrated his enemy's chief instrument, and in such a clever way
as to make it probable that Mr. Feist might be kept in confinement
as long as his captor chose. Doubtless such a high-handed act would
ultimately go against the latter when on his trial, but in the
meantime the chief witness was locked up and could not get out. Sir
Jasper Threlfall would state that his patient was in such a state of
health, owing to the abuse of alcohol, that it was not safe to set
him at liberty, and that in his present condition his mind was so
unsettled by drink that he could not be regarded as a sane witness;
and if Sir Jasper Threlfall said that, it would not be easy to get
Charles Feist out of Dr. Bream's establishment in less than three
months.

Mr. Bamberger was obliged to admit that his partner, chief, and enemy
had stolen a clever march on him. Being of a practical turn of mind,
however, and not hampered by much faith in mankind, even in the most
eminent, who write the mysterious capital letters after their names,
he wondered to what extent Van Torp owned Sir Jasper, and he went to
see him on pretence of asking advice about his liver.

The great man gave him two guineas' worth of thumping, auscultating,
and poking in the ribs, and told him rather disagreeably that he
was as healthy as a young crocodile, and had a somewhat similar
constitution. A partner of Mr. Van Torp, the American financier?
Indeed! Sir Jasper had heard the name but had never seen the
millionaire, and asked politely whether he sometimes came to England.
It is not untruthful to ask a question to which one knows the answer.
Mr. Bamberger himself, for instance, who knew that he was perfectly
well, was just going to put down two guineas for having been told so,
in answer to a question.

'I believe you are treating Mr. Feist,' he said, going more directly
to the point.

'Mr. Feist?' repeated the great authority vaguely.

'Yes. Mr. Charles Feist. He's at Dr. Bream's private hospital in West
Kensington.'

'Ah, yes,' said Sir Jasper. 'Dr. Bream is treating him. He's not a
patient of mine.'

'I thought I'd ask you what his chances are,' observed Isidore
Bamberger, fixing his sharp eyes on the famous doctor's face. 'He used
to be my private secretary.'

He might just as well have examined the back of the doctor's head.

'He's not a patient of mine,' Sir Jasper said. 'I'm only one of the
visiting doctors at Dr. Bream's establishment. I don't go there unless
he sends for me, and I keep no notes of his cases. You will have to
ask him. If I am not mistaken his hours are from ten to twelve.
And now'--Sir Jasper rose--'as I can only congratulate you on your
splendid health--no, I really cannot prescribe anything--literally
nothing--'

Isidore Bamberger had left three patients in the waiting-room and was
obliged to go away, as his 'splendid health' did not afford him the
slightest pretext for asking more questions. He deposited his two
guineas on the mantelpiece neatly wrapped in a bit of note-paper,
while Sir Jasper examined the handle of the door with a stony gaze,
and he said 'good morning' as he went out.

'Good morning,' answered Sir Jasper, and as Mr. Bamberger crossed the
threshold the single clanging stroke of the doctor's bell was heard,
summoning the next patient.

The American man of business was puzzled, for he was a good judge of
humanity, and was sure that when the Englishman said that he had never
seen Van Torp he was telling the literal truth. Mr. Bamberger was
convinced that there had been some agreement between them to make it
impossible for any one to see Feist. He knew the latter well, however,
and had great confidence in his remarkable power of holding his
tongue, even when under the influence of drink.

When Tiberius had to choose between two men equally well fitted for a
post of importance, he had them both to supper, and chose the one who
was least affected by wine, not at all for the sake of seeing the
match, but on the excellent principle that in an age when heavy
drinking was the rule the man who could swallow the largest quantity
without becoming talkative was the one to be best trusted with a
secret; and the fact that Tiberius himself had the strongest head in
the Empire made him a good judge.

Bamberger, on the same principle, believed that Charles Feist would
hold his tongue, and he also felt tolerably sure that the former
secretary had no compromising papers in his possession, for his memory
had always been extraordinary. Feist had formerly been able to carry
in his mind a number of letters which Bamberger 'talked off' to him
consecutively without even using shorthand, and could type them
afterwards with unfailing accuracy. It was therefore scarcely likely
that he kept notes of the articles he wrote about Van Torp.

But his employer did not know that Feist's memory was failing from
drink, and that he no longer trusted his marvellous faculty. Van Torp
had sequestrated him and shut him up, Bamberger believed; but neither
Van Torp nor any one else would get anything out of him.

And if any one made him talk, what great harm would be done, after
all? It was not to be supposed that such a man as Isidore Bamberger
had trusted only to his own keenness in collecting evidence, or to a
few pencilled notes as a substitute for the principal witness himself,
when an accident might happen at any moment to a man who led such a
life. The case for the prosecution had been quietly prepared during
several months past, and the evidence that was to send Rufus Van Torp
to execution, or to an asylum for the Criminal Insane for life, was in
the safe of Isidore Bamberger's lawyer in New York, unless, at that
very moment, it was already in the hands of the Public Prosecutor. A
couple of cables would do the rest at any time, and in a few hours.
In murder cases, the extradition treaty works as smoothly as the
telegraph itself. The American authorities would apply to the English
Home Secretary, the order would go to Scotland Yard, and Van Torp
would be arrested immediately and taken home by the first steamer, to
be tried in New York.

Six months earlier he might have pleaded insanity with a possible
chance, but in the present state of feeling the plea would hardly be
admitted. A man who has been held up to public execration in the press
for weeks, and whom no one attempts to defend, is in a bad case if a
well-grounded accusation of murder is brought against him at such a
moment; and Isidore Bamberger firmly believed in the truth of the
charge and in the validity of the evidence.

He consoled himself with these considerations, and with the reflection
that Feist was actually safer where he was, and less liable to
accident than if he were at large. Mr. Bamberger walked slowly down
Harley Street to Cavendish Square, with his head low between his
shoulders, his hat far back on his head, his eyes on the pavement, and
the shiny toes of his patent leather boots turned well out. His bowed
legs were encased in loose black trousers, and had as many angles as
the forepaws of a Dachshund or a Dandie Dinmont. The peculiarities of
his ungainly gait and figure were even more apparent than usual, and
as he walked he swung his long arms, that ended in large black gloves
which looked as if they were stuffed with sawdust.

Yet there was something in his face that set him far beyond and above
ridicule, and the passers-by saw it and wondered gravely who and
what this man in black might be, and what great misfortune and still
greater passion had moulded the tragic mark upon his features; and
none of those who looked at him glanced at his heavy, ill-made figure,
or noticed his clumsy walk, or realised that he was most evidently
a typical German Jew, who perhaps kept an antiquity shop in Wardour
Street, and had put on his best coat to call on a rich collector in
the West End.

Those who saw him only saw his face and went on, feeling that they had
passed near something greater and sadder and stronger than anything in
their own lives could ever be.

But he went on his way, unconscious of the men and women he met, and
not thinking where he went, crossing Oxford Street and then turning
down Regent Street and following it to Piccadilly and the Haymarket.
Just before he reached the theatre, he slackened his pace and looked
about him, as if he were waking up; and there, in the cross street,
just behind the theatre, he saw a telegraph office.

He entered, pushed his hat still a little farther back, and wrote a
cable message. It was as short as it could be, for it consisted of one
word only besides the address, and that one word had only two letters:

'Go.'

That was all, and there was nothing mysterious about the syllable,
for almost any one would understand that it was used as in starting
a footrace, and meant, 'Begin operations at once!' It was the word
agreed upon between Isidore Bamberger and his lawyer. The latter had
been allowed all the latitude required in such a case, for he had
instructions to lay the evidence before the District Attorney-General
without delay, if anything happened to make immediate action seem
advisable. In any event, he was to do so on receiving the message
which had now been sent.

The evidence consisted, in the first place, of certain irrefutable
proofs that Miss Bamberger had not died from shock, but had been
killed by a thin and extremely sharp instrument with which she had
been stabbed in the back. Isidore Bamberger's own doctor had satisfied
himself of this, and had signed his statement under oath, and
Bamberger had instantly thought of a certain thin steel letter-opener
which Van Torp always had in his pocket.

Next came the affidavit of Paul Griggs. The witness knew the Opera
House well. Had been in the stalls on the night in question. Had not
moved from his seat till the performance was over, and had been one of
the last to get out into the corridor. There was a small door in the
corridor on the south side which was generally shut. It opened upon a
passage communicating with the part of the building that is let for
business offices. Witness's attention had been attracted by part of
a red silk dress which lay on the floor outside the door, the latter
being ajar. Suspecting an accident, witness opened door, found Miss
Bamberger, and carried her to manager's room not far off. On reaching
home had found stains of blood on his hands. Had said nothing of this,
because he had seen notice of the lady's death from shock in next
morning's paper. Was nevertheless convinced that blood must have been
on her dress.

The murder was therefore proved. But the victim had not been robbed
of her jewellery, which demonstrated that, if the crime had not been
committed by a lunatic, the motive for it must have been personal.

With regard to identity of the murderer, Charles Feist deposed that on
the night in question he had entered the Opera late, having only an
admission to the standing room, that he was close to one of the doors
when the explosion took place and had been one of the first to leave
the house. The emergency lights in the corridors were on a separate
circuit, but had been also momentarily extinguished. They were up
again before those in the house. The crowd had at once become jammed
in the doorways, so that people got out much more slowly than might
have been expected. Many actually fell in the exits and were trampled
on. Then Madame Cordova had begun to sing in the dark, and the panic
had ceased in a few seconds. The witness did not think that more than
three hundred people altogether had got out through the several doors.
He himself had at once made for the main entrance. A few persons
rushed past him in the dark, descending the stairs from the boxes. One
or two fell on the steps. Just as the emergency lights went up again,
witness saw a young lady in a red silk dress fall, but did not see her
face distinctly; he was certain that she had a short string of pearls
round her throat. They gleamed in the light as she fell. She was
instantly lifted to her feet by Mr. Rufus Van Torp, who must have been
following her closely. She seemed to have hurt herself a little,
and he almost carried her down the corridor in the direction of
the carriage lobby on the Thirty-Eighth Street side. The two then
disappeared through a door. The witness would swear to the door, and
he described its position accurately. It seemed to have been left
ajar, but there was no light on the other side of it. The witness did
not know where the door led to. He had often wondered. It was not
for the use of the public. He frequently went to the Opera and was
perfectly familiar with the corridors. It was behind this door that
Paul Griggs had found Miss Bamberger. Questioned as to a possible
motive for the murder, the witness stated that Rufus Van Torp was
known to have shown homicidal tendencies, though otherwise perfectly
sane. In his early youth he had lived four years on a cattle-ranch as
a cow-puncher, and had undoubtedly killed two men during that time.
Witness had been private secretary to his partner, Mr. Isidore
Bamberger, and while so employed Mr. Van Torp had fired a revolver at
him in his private office in a fit of passion about a message witness
was sent to deliver. Two clerks in a neighbouring room had heard the
shot. Believing Mr. Van Torp to be mad, witness had said nothing at
the time, but had left Mr. Bamberger soon afterwards. It was always
said that, several years ago, on board of his steam yacht, Mr. Van
Torp had once violently pulled a friend who was on board out of his
berth at two in the morning, and had dragged him on deck, saying that
he must throw him overboard and drown him, as the only way of saving
his soul. The watch on deck had had great difficulty in overpowering
Mr. Van Torp, who was very strong. With regard to the late Miss
Bamberger the witness thought that Mr. Van Torp had killed her to get
rid of her, because she was in possession of facts that would ruin him
if they were known and because she had threatened to reveal them to
her father. If she had done so, Van Torp would have been completely in
his partner's power. Mr. Bamberger could have made a beggar of him as
the only alternative to penal servitude. Questioned as to the nature
of this information, witness said that it concerned the explosion,
which had been planned by Van Torp for his own purposes. Either in a
moment of expansion, under the influence of the drug he was in the
habit of taking, or else in real anxiety for her safety, he had told
Miss Bamberger that the explosion would take place, warning her to
remain in her home, which was situated on the Riverside Drive, very
far from the scene of the disaster. She had undoubtedly been so
horrified that she had thereupon insisted upon dissolving her
engagement to marry him, and had threatened to inform her father of
the horrible plot. She had never really wished to marry Van Torp, but
had accepted him in deference to her father's wishes. He was known
to be devoting himself at that very time to a well-known primadonna
engaged at the Metropolitan Opera, and Miss Bamberger probably had
some suspicion of this. Witness said the motive seemed sufficient,
considering that the accused had already twice taken human life. His
choice lay between killing her and falling into the power of his
partner. He had injured Mr. Bamberger, as was well known, and Mr.
Bamberger was a resentful man.

The latter part of Charles Feist's deposition was certainly more in
the nature of an argument than of evidence pure and simple, and it
might not be admitted in court; but Isidore Bamberger had instructed
his lawyer, and the Public Prosecutor would say it all, and more also,
and much better; and public opinion was roused all over the United
States against the Nickel Tyrant, as Van Torp was now called.

In support of the main point there was a short note to Miss Bamberger
in Van Torp's handwriting, which had afterwards been found on her
dressing-table. It must have arrived before she had gone out to
dinner. It contained a final and urgent entreaty that she would not go
to the Opera, nor leave the house that evening, and was signed with
Van Torp's initials only, but no one who knew his handwriting would be
likely to doubt that the note was genuine.

There were some other scattered pieces of evidence which fitted the
rest very well. Mr. Van Torp had not been seen at his own house,
nor in any club, nor down town, after he had gone out on Wednesday
afternoon, until the following Friday, when he had returned to make
his final arrangements for sailing the next morning. Bamberger had
employed a first-rate detective, but only one, to find out all that
could be discovered about Van Torp's movements. The millionaire had
been at the house on Riverside Drive early in the afternoon to see
Miss Bamberger, as he had told Margaret on board the steamer, but
Bamberger had not seen his daughter after that till she was brought
home dead, for he had been detained by an important meeting at which
he presided, and knowing that she was dining out to go to the theatre
he had telephoned that he would dine at his club. He himself had tried
to telephone to Van Torp later in the evening but had not been able to
find him, and had not seen him till Friday.

This was the substance of the evidence which Bamberger's lawyer and
the detective would lay before the District Attorney-General on
receiving the cable.




CHAPTER XV


When Lady Maud stopped at Margaret's house on her way to the theatre
she had been dining at Princes' with a small party of people, amongst
whom Paul Griggs had found himself, and as there was no formality to
hinder her from choosing her own place she had sat down next to him.
The table was large and round, the sixty or seventy other diners in
the room made a certain amount of noise, so that it was easy to talk
in undertones while the conversation of the others was general.

The veteran man of letters was an old acquaintance of Lady Maud's; and
as she made no secret of her friendship with Rufus Van Torp, it was
not surprising that Griggs should warn her of the latter's danger. As
he had expected when he left New York, he had received a visit from a
'high-class' detective, who came to find out what he knew about Miss
Bamberger's death. This is a bad world, as we all know, and it is made
so by a good many varieties of bad people. As Mr. Van Torp had said to
Logotheti, 'different kinds of cats have different kinds of ways,' and
the various classes of criminals are pursued by various classes of
detectives. Many are ex-policemen, and make up the pack that hunts
the well-dressed lady shop-lifter, the gentle pickpocket, the agile
burglar, the Paris Apache, and the common murderer of the Bill Sykes
type; they are good dogs in their way, if you do not press them,
though they are rather apt to give tongue. But when they are not
ex-policemen, they are always ex-something else, since there is no
college for detectives, and it is not probable that any young man ever
deliberately began life with the intention of becoming one. Edgar Poe
invented the amateur detective, and modern writers have developed him
till he is a familiar and always striking figure in fiction and on the
stage. Whether he really exists or not does not matter. I have heard a
great living painter ask the question: What has art to do with truth?
But as a matter of fact Paul Griggs, who had seen a vast deal, had
never met an amateur detective; and my own impression is that if one
existed he would instantly turn himself into a professional because it
would be so very profitable.

The one who called on Griggs in his lodgings wrote 'barrister-at-law'
after his name, and had the right to do so. He had languished in
chambers, briefless and half starving, either because he had no talent
for the bar, or because he had failed to marry a solicitor's daughter.
He himself was inclined to attribute his want of success to the
latter cause. But he had not wasted his time, though he was more than
metaphorically threadbare, and his waist would have made a sensation
at a staymaker's. He had watched and pondered on many curious cases
for years; and one day, when a 'high-class' criminal had baffled the
police and had well-nigh confounded the Attorney-General and proved
himself a saint, the starving barrister had gone quietly to work in
his own way, had discovered the truth, had taken his information to
the prosecution, had been the means of sending the high-class one to
penal servitude, and had covered himself with glory; since when he had
grown sleek and well-liking, if not rich, as a professional detective.

Griggs had been perfectly frank, and had told without hesitation all
he could remember of the circumstances. In answer to further questions
he said he knew Mr. Van Torp tolerably well, and had not seen him in
the Opera House on the evening of the murder. He did not know whether
the financier's character was violent. If it was, he had never seen
any notable manifestation of temper. Did he know that Mr. Van Torp had
once lived on a ranch, and had killed two men in a shooting
affray? Yes, he had heard so, but the shooting might have been in
self-defence. Did he know anything about the blowing up of the works
of which Van Torp had been accused in the papers? Nothing more than
the public knew. Or anything about the circumstances of Van Torp's
engagement to Miss Bamberger? Nothing whatever. Would he read the
statement and sign his name to it? He would, and he did.

Griggs thought the young man acted more like an ordinary lawyer than a
detective, and said so with a smile.

'Oh no,' was the quiet answer. 'In my business it's quite as important
to recognise honesty as it is to detect fraud. That's all.'

For his own part the man of letters did not care a straw whether Van
Torp had committed the murder or not, but he thought it very unlikely.
On general principles, he thought the law usually found out the truth
in the end, and he was ready to do what he could to help it. He held
his tongue, and told no one about the detective's visit, because he
had no intimate friend in England; partly, too, because he wished to
keep his name out of what was now called 'the Van Torp scandal.'

He would never have alluded to the matter if he had not accidentally
found himself next to Lady Maud at dinner. She had always liked him
and trusted him, and he liked her and her father. On that evening she
spoke of Van Torp within the first ten minutes, and expressed her
honest indignation at the general attack made on 'the kindest man that
ever lived.' Then Griggs felt that she had a sort of right to know
what was being done to bring against her friend an accusation of
murder, for he believed Van Torp innocent, and was sure that Lady
Maud would warn him; but it was for her sake only that Griggs spoke,
because he pitied her.

She took it more calmly than he had expected, but she grew a little
paler, and that look came into her eyes which Margaret and Logotheti
saw there an hour afterwards; and presently she asked Griggs if he too
would join the week-end party at Craythew, telling him that Van Torp
would be there. Griggs accepted, after a moment's hesitation.

She was not quite sure why she had so frankly appealed to Logotheti
for help when they left Margaret's house together, but she was not
disappointed in his answer. He was 'exotic,' as she had said of him;
he was hopelessly in love with Cordova, who disliked Van Torp, and he
could not be expected to take much trouble for any other woman; she
had not the very slightest claim on him. Yet she had asked him to help
her in a way which might be anything but lawful, even supposing that
it did not involve positive cruelty.

For she had not been married to Leven four years without learning
something of Asiatic practices, and she knew that there were more
means of making a man tell a secret than by persuasion or wily
cross-examination. It was all very well to keep within the bounds of
the law and civilisation, but where the whole existence of her best
friend was at stake, Lady Maud was much too simple, primitive, and
feminine to be hampered by any such artificial considerations, and
she turned naturally to a man who did not seem to be a slave to them
either. She had not quite dared to hope that he would help her, and
his readiness to do so was something of a surprise; but she would have
been astonished if he had been in the least shocked at the implied
suggestion of deliberately torturing Charles Feist till he revealed
the truth about the murder. She only felt a little uncomfortable when
she reflected that Feist might not know it after all, whereas she had
boldly told Logotheti that he did.

If the Greek had hesitated for a few seconds before giving his answer,
it was not that he was doubtful of his own willingness to do what she
wished, but because he questioned his power to do it. The request
itself appealed to the Oriental's love of excitement and to his taste
for the uncommon in life. If he had not sometimes found occasions for
satisfying both, he could not have lived in Paris and London at all,
but would have gone back to Constantinople, which is the last refuge
of romance in Europe, the last hiding-place of mediaeval adventure,
the last city of which a new Decameron of tales could still be told,
and might still be true.

Lady Maud had good nerves, and she watched the play with her friends
and talked between the acts, very much as if nothing had happened,
except that she was pale and there was that look in her eyes; but only
Paul Griggs noticed it, because he had a way of watching the small
changes of expression that may mean tragedy, but more often signify
indigestion, or too much strong tea, or a dun's letter, or a tight
shoe, or a bad hand at bridge, or the presence of a bore in the room,
or the flat failure of expected pleasure, or sauce spilt on a new gown
by a rival's butler, or being left out of something small and smart,
or any of those minor aches that are the inheritance of the social
flesh, and drive women perfectly mad while they last.

But Griggs knew that none of these troubles afflicted Lady Maud, and
when he spoke to her now and then, between the acts, she felt his
sympathy for her in every word and inflection.

She was glad when the evening was over and she was at home in her
dressing-room, and there was no more effort to be made till the next
day. But even alone, she did not behave or look very differently; she
twisted up her thick brown hair herself, as methodically as ever, and
laid out the black velvet gown on the lounge after shaking it out,
so that it should be creased as little as possible; but when she was
ready to go to bed she put on a dressing-gown and sat down at her
table to write to Rufus Van Torp.

The letter was begun and she had written half a dozen lines when she
laid down the pen, to unlock a small drawer from which she took an old
blue envelope that had never been sealed, though it was a good deal
the worse for wear. There was a photograph in it, which she laid
before her on the letter; and she looked down at it steadily, resting
her elbows on the table and her forehead and temples in her hands.

It was a snapshot photograph of a young officer in khaki and puttees,
not very well taken, and badly mounted on a bit of white pasteboard
that might have been cut from a bandbox with a penknife; but it was
all she had, and there could never be another.

She looked at it a long time.

'You understand, dear,' she said at last, very low; 'you understand.'

She put it away again and locked the drawer before she went on with
her letter to Van Torp. It was easy enough to tell him what she had
learned about Feist from Logotheti; it was even possible that he had
found it out for himself, and had not taken the trouble to inform her
of the fact. Apart from the approval that friendship inspires, she had
always admired the cool discernment of events which he showed when
great things were at stake. But it was one thing, she now told him, to
be indifferent to the stupid attacks of the press, it would be quite
another to allow himself to be accused of murder; the time had come
when he must act, and without delay; there was a limit beyond which
indifference became culpable apathy; it was clear enough now, she
said, that all these attacks on him had been made to ruin him in the
estimation of the public on both sides of the Atlantic before striking
the first blow, as he himself had guessed; Griggs was surely not an
alarmist, and Griggs said confidently that Van Torp's enemies meant
business; without doubt, a mass of evidence had been carefully got
together during the past three months, and it was pretty sure that an
attempt would be made before long to arrest him; would he do nothing
to make such an outrage impossible? She had not forgotten, she could
never forget, what she owed him, but on his side he owed something to
her, and to the great friendship that bound them to each other. Who
was this man Feist, and who was behind him? She did not know why she
was so sure that he knew the truth, supposing that there had really
been a murder, but her instinct told her so.

Lady Maud was not gifted with much power of writing, for she was not
clever at books, or with pen and ink, but she wrote her letter
with deep conviction and striking clearness. The only point of any
importance which she did not mention was that Logotheti had promised
to help her, and she did not write of that because she was not really
sure that he could do anything, though she was convinced that he would
try. She was very anxious. She was horrified when she thought of what
might happen if nothing were done. She entreated Van Torp to answer
that he would take steps to defend himself; and that, if possible, he
would come to town so that they might consult together.

She finished her letter and went to bed; but her good nerves failed
her for once, and it was a long time before she could get to sleep.
It was absurd, of course, but she remembered every case she had ever
heard of in which innocent men had been convicted of crimes they had
not committed and had suffered for them; and in a hideous instant,
between waking and dozing, she saw Rufus Van Torp hanged before her
eyes.

The impression was so awful that she started from her pillow with a
cry and turned up the electric lamp. It was not till the light flooded
the room that the image quite faded away and she could let her
head rest on the pillow again, and even then her heart was beating
violently, as it had only beaten once in her life before that night.




CHAPTER XVI


Sir Jasper Threlfall did not know how long it would be before Mr.
Feist could safely be discharged from the establishment in which
Logotheti had so kindly placed him. Dr. Bream said 'it was as bad a
case of chronic alcoholism as he often saw.' What has grammar to do
with the treatment of the nerves? Mr. Feist said he did not want to be
cured of chronic alcoholism, and demanded that he should be let out
at once. Dr. Bream answered that it was against his principles to
discharge a patient half cured. Mr. Feist retorted that it was a
violation of personal liberty to cure a man against his will. The
physician smiled kindly at a view he heard expressed every day, and
which the law shared, though it might not be very ready to support it.
Physically, Mr. Feist was afraid of Dr. Bream, who had played football
for Guy's Hospital and had the complexion of a healthy baby and a
quiet eye. So the patient changed his tone, and whined for something
to calm his agitated nerves. One teaspoonful of whisky was all he
begged for, and he promised not to ask for it to-morrow if he might
have it to-day. The doctor was obdurate about spirits, but felt his
pulse, examined the pupils of his eyes, and promised him a calming
hypodermic in an hour. It was too soon after breakfast, he said. Mr.
Feist only once attempted to use violence, and then two large men came
into the room, as quiet and healthy as the doctor himself, and gently
but firmly put him to bed, tucking him up in such an extraordinary way
that he found it quite impossible to move or to get his hands out; and
Dr. Bream, smiling with exasperating calm, stuck a needle into his
shoulder, after which he presently fell asleep.

He had been drinking hard for years, so that it was a very bad case;
and besides, he seemed to have something on his mind, which made it
worse.

Logotheti came to see him now, and took a vast deal of trouble to be
agreeable. At his first visit Feist flew into a rage and accused the
Greek of having kidnapped him and shut him up in a prison, where
he was treated like a lunatic; but to this Logotheti was quite
indifferent; he only shook his head rather sadly, and offered Feist a
very excellent cigarette, such as it was quite impossible to buy, even
in London. After a little hesitation the patient took it, and the
effect was very soothing to his temper. Indeed it was wonderful, for
in less than two minutes his features relaxed, his eyes became quiet,
and he actually apologised for having spoken so rudely. Logotheti had
been kindness itself, he said, had saved his life at the very moment
when he was going to cut his throat, and had been in all respects the
good Samaritan. The cigarette was perfectly delicious. It was about
the best smoke he had enjoyed since he had left the States, he said.
He wished Logotheti to please to understand that he wanted to settle
up for all expenses as soon as possible, and to pay his weekly bills
at Dr. Bream's. There had been twenty or thirty pounds in notes in his
pocket-book, and a letter of credit, but all his things had been taken
away from him. He concluded it was all right, but it seemed rather
strenuous to take his papers too. Perhaps Mr. Logotheti, who was so
kind, would make sure that they were in a safe place, and tell the
doctor to let him see any other friends who called. Then he asked
for another of those wonderful cigarettes, but Logotheti was awfully
sorry--there had only been two, and he had just smoked the other
himself. He showed his empty case.

'By the way,' he said, 'if the doctor should happen to come in and
notice the smell of the smoke, don't tell him that you had one of
mine. My tobacco is rather strong, and he might think it would do you
harm, you know. I see that you have some light ones there, on the
table. Just let him think that you smoked one of them. I promise to
bring some more to-morrow, and we'll have a couple together.'

That was what Logotheti said, and it comforted Mr. Feist, who
recognised the opium at once; all that afternoon and through all the
next morning he told himself that he was to have another of those
cigarettes, and perhaps two, at three o'clock in the afternoon, when
Logotheti had said that he would come again.

Before leaving his own rooms on the following day, the Greek put four
cigarettes into his case, for he had not forgotten his promise; he
took two from a box that lay on the table, and placed them so that
they would be nearest to his own hand when he offered his case, but he
took the other two from a drawer which was always locked, and of which
the key was at one end of his superornate watch-chain, and he placed
them on the other side of the case, conveniently for a friend to take.
All four cigarettes looked exactly alike.

If any one had pointed out to him that an Englishman would not think
it fair play to drug a man deliberately, Logotheti would have smiled
and would have replied by asking whether it was fair play to accuse an
innocent man of murder, a retort which would only become unanswerable
if it could be proved that Van Torp was suspected unjustly. But to
this objection, again, the Greek would have replied that he had been
brought up in Constantinople, where they did things in that way;
and that, except for the trifling obstacle of the law, there was
no particular reason for not strangling Mr. Feist with the English
equivalent for a bowstring, since he had printed a disagreeable story
about Miss Donne, and was, besides, a very offensive sort of person
in appearance and manner. There had always been a certain directness
about Logotheti's view of man's rights.

He went to see Mr. Feist every day at three o'clock, in the most kind
way possible, made himself as agreeable as he could, and gave him
cigarettes with a good deal of opium in them. He also presented Feist
with a pretty little asbestos lamp which was constructed to purify
the air, and had a really wonderful capacity for absorbing the rather
peculiar odour of the cigarettes. Dr. Bream always made his round
in the morning, and the men nurses he employed to take care of his
patients either did not notice anything unusual, or supposed that
Logotheti smoked some 'outlandish Turkish stuff,' and, because he was
a privileged person, they said nothing about it. As he had brought
the patient to the establishment to be cured, it was really not to be
supposed that he would supply him with forbidden narcotics.

Now, to a man who is poisoned with drink and is suddenly deprived of
it, opium is from the beginning as delightful as it is nauseous to
most healthy people when they first taste it; and during the next four
or five days, while Feist appeared to be improving faster than might
have been expected, he was in reality acquiring such a craving for
his daily dose of smoke that it would soon be acute suffering to be
deprived of it; and this was what Logotheti wished. He would have
supplied him with brandy if he had not been sure that the contraband
would be discovered and stopped by the doctor; but opium, in the
hands of one who knows exactly how it is used, is very much harder
to detect, unless the doctor sees the smoker when he is under the
influence of the drug, while the pupils of the eye are unnaturally
contracted and the face is relaxed in that expression of beatitude
which only the great narcotics can produce--the state which Baudelaire
called the Artificial Paradise.

During these daily visits Logotheti became very confidential; that is
to say, he exercised all his ingenuity in the attempt to make Feist
talk about himself. But he was not very successful. Broken as the man
was, his characteristic reticence was scarcely at all relaxed, and it
was quite impossible to get beyond the barrier. One day Logotheti gave
him a cigarette more than usual, as an experiment, but he went to
sleep almost immediately, sitting up in his chair. The opium, as a
moderate substitute for liquor, temporarily restored the habitual tone
of his system and revived his natural self-control, and Logotheti soon
gave up the idea of extracting any secret from him in a moment of
garrulous expansion.

There was the other way, which was now prepared, and the Greek had
learned enough about his victim to justify him in using it. The cypher
expert, who had been at work on Feist's diary, had now completed his
key and brought Logotheti the translation. He was a rather shabby
little man, a penman employed to do occasional odd jobs about the
Foreign Office, such as engrossing documents and the like, by which he
earned from eighteenpence to half-a-crown an hour, according to the
style of penmanship required, and he was well known in the criminal
courts as an expert on handwriting in forgery cases.

He brought his work to Logotheti, who at once asked for the long entry
concerning the night of the explosion. The expert turned to it and
read it aloud. It was a statement of the circumstances to which Feist
was prepared to swear, and which have been summed up in a previous
chapter. Van Torp was not mentioned by name in the diary, but was
referred to as 'he'; the other entries in the journal, however, fully
proved that Van Torp was meant, even if Logotheti had felt any doubt
of it.

The expert informed him, however, that the entry was not the original
one, which had apparently been much shorter, and had been obliterated
in the ordinary way with a solution of chloride of lime. Here and
there very pale traces of the previous writing were faintly visible,
but there was not enough to give the sense of what was gone. This
proved that the ink had not been long dry when it had been removed,
as the expert explained. It was very hard to destroy old writing so
completely that neither heat nor chemicals would bring it out again.
Therefore Feist must have decided to change the entry soon after he
had made it, and probably on the next day. The expert had not found
any other page which had been similarly treated. The shabby little man
looked at Logotheti, and Logotheti looked at him, and both nodded; and
the Greek paid him generously for his work.

It was clear that Feist had meant to aid his own memory, and had
rather clumsily tampered with his diary in order to make it agree with
the evidence he intended to give, rather than meaning to produce the
notes in court. What Logotheti meant to find out was what the man
himself really knew and what he had first written down; that, and some
other things. In conversation, Logotheti had asked him to describe the
panic at the theatre, and Cordova's singing in the dark, but Feist's
answers had been anything but interesting.

'You can't remember much about that kind of thing,' he had said in his
drawling way, 'because there isn't much to remember. There was a crash
and the lights went out, and people fought their way to the doors in
the dark till there was a general squash; then Madame Cordova began
to sing, and that kind of calmed things down till the lights went up
again. That's about all I remember.'

His recollections did not at all agree with what he had entered in his
diary; but though Logotheti tried a second time two days later, Feist
repeated the same story with absolute verbal accuracy. The Greek asked
him if he had known 'that poor Miss Bamberger who died of shock.'
Feist blew out a cloud of drugged tobacco smoke before he answered,
with one of his disagreeable smiles, that he had known her pretty
well, for he had been her father's private secretary. He explained
that he had given up the place because he had come into some money.
Mr. Bamberger was 'a very pleasant gentleman,' Feist declared, and
poor Miss Bamberger had been a 'superb dresser and a first-class
conversationalist, and was a severe loss to her friends and admirers.'
Though Logotheti, who was only a Greek, did not understand every word
of this panegyric, he perceived that it was intended for the highest
praise. He said he should like to know Mr. Bamberger, and was sorry
that he had not known Miss Bamberger, who had been engaged to marry
Mr. Van Torp, as every one had heard.

He thought he saw a difference in Feist's expression, but was not sure
of it. The pale, unhealthy, and yet absurdly youthful face was not
naturally mobile, and the almost colourless eyes always had rather a
fixed and staring look. Logotheti was aware of a new meaning in them
rather than of a distinct change. He accordingly went on to say that
he had heard poor Miss Bamberger spoken of as heartless, and he
brought out the word so unexpectedly that Feist looked sharply at him.

'Well,' he said, 'some people certainly thought so. I daresay she was.
It don't matter much, now she's dead, anyway.'

'She paid for it, poor girl,' answered Logotheti very deliberately.
'They say she was murdered.'

The change in Feist's face was now unmistakable. There was a drawing
down of the corners of the mouth, and a lowering of the lids that
meant something, and the unhealthy complexion took a greyish shade.
Logotheti was too wise to watch his intended victim, and leaned back
in a careless attitude, gazing out of the window at the bright creeper
on the opposite wall.

'I've heard it suggested,' said Mr. Feist rather thickly, out of a
perfect storm of drugged smoke.

It came out of his ugly nostrils, it blew out of his mouth, it seemed
to issue even from his ears and eyes.

'I suppose we shall never know the truth,' said Logotheti in an idle
tone, and not seeming to look at his companion. 'Mr. Griggs--do you
remember Mr. Griggs, the author, at the Turkish Embassy, where we
first met? Tall old fellow, sad-looking, bony, hard; you remember him,
don't you?'

'Why, yes,' drawled Feist, emitting more smoke, 'I know him quite
well.'

'He found blood on his hands after he had carried her. Had you not
heard that? I wondered whether you saw her that evening. Did you?'

'I saw her from a distance in the box with her friends,' answered
Feist steadily.

'Did you see her afterwards?'

The direct question came suddenly, and the strained look in Feist's
face became more intense. Logotheti fancied he understood very well
what was passing in the young man's mind; he intended to swear in
court that he had seen Van Torp drag the girl to the place where her
body was afterwards found, and if he now denied this, the Greek, who
was probably Van Torp's friend, might appear as a witness and narrate
the present conversation; and though this would not necessarily
invalidate the evidence, it might weaken it in the opinion of the
jury. Feist had of course suspected that Logotheti had some object in
forcing him to undergo a cure, and this suspicion had been confirmed
by the opium cigarettes, which he would have refused after the first
time if he had possessed the strength of mind to do so.

While Logotheti watched him, three small drops of perspiration
appeared high up on his forehead, just where the parting of his thin
light hair began; for he felt that he must make up his mind what to
say, and several seconds had already elapsed since the question.

'As a matter of fact,' he said at last, with an evident effort, 'I did
catch sight of Miss Bamberger later.'

He had been aware of the moisture on his forehead, and had hoped that
Logotheti would not notice it, but the drops now gathered and rolled
down, so that he was obliged to take out his handkerchief.

'It's getting quite hot,' he said, by way of explanation.

'Yes,' answered Logotheti, humouring him, 'the room is warm. You must
have been one of the last people who saw Miss Bamberger alive,' he
added. 'Was she trying to get out?'

'I suppose so.'

Logotheti pretended to laugh a little.

'You must have been quite sure when you saw her,' he said.

Feist was in a very overwrought condition by this time, and Logotheti
reflected that if his nerve did not improve he would make a bad
impression on a jury.

'Now I'll tell you the truth,' he said rather desperately.

'By all means!' And Logotheti prepared to hear and remember accurately
the falsehood which would probably follow immediately on such a
statement.

But he was disappointed.

'The truth is,' said Feist, 'I don't care much to talk about this
affair at present. I can't explain now, but you'll understand one of
these days, and you'll say I was right.'

'Oh, I see!'

Logotheti smiled and held out his case, for Feist had finished the
first cigarette. He refused another, however, to the other's surprise.

'Thanks,' he said, 'but I guess I won't smoke any more of those. I
believe they get on to my nerves.'

'Do you really not wish me to bring you any more of them?' asked
Logotheti, affecting a sort of surprised concern. 'Do you think they
hurt you?'

'I do. That's exactly what I mean. I'm much obliged, all the same, but
I'm going to give them up, just like that.'

'Very well,' Logotheti answered. 'I promise not to bring any more. I
think you are very wise to make the resolution, if you really think
they hurt you--though I don't see why they should.'

Like most weak people who make good resolutions, Mr. Feist did not
realise what he was doing. He understood horribly well, forty-eight
hours later, when he was dragging himself at his tormentor's feet,
entreating the charity of half a cigarette, of one teaspoonful of
liquor, of anything, though it were deadly poison, that could rest his
agonised nerves for a single hour, for ten minutes, for an instant,
offering his life and soul for it, parching for it, burning, sweating,
trembling, vibrating with horror, and sick with fear for the want of
it.

For Logotheti was an Oriental and had lived in Constantinople; and
he knew what opium does, and what a man will do to get it, and that
neither passion of love, nor bond of affection, nor fear of man or
God, nor of death and damnation, will stand against that awful craving
when the poison is within reach.




CHAPTER XVII


The society papers printed a paragraph which said that Lord Creedmore
and Countess Leven were going to have a week-end party at Craythew,
and the list of guests included the names of Mr. Van Torp and Señorita
da Cordova, 'Monsieur Konstantinos Logotheti' and Mr. Paul Griggs,
after those of a number of overpoweringly smart people.

Lady Maud's brothers saw the paragraph, and the one who was in the
Grenadier Guards asked the one who was in the Blues if 'the Governor
was going in for zoology or lion-taming in his old age'; but the
brother in the Blues said it was 'Maud who liked freaks of nature, and
Greeks, and things, because they were so amusing to photograph.'

At all events, Lady Maud had studiously left out her brothers and
sisters in making up the Craythew party, a larger one than had been
assembled there for many years; it was so large indeed that the
'freaks' would not have been prominent figures at all, even if they
had been such unusual persons as the young man in the Blues imagined
them.

For though Lord Creedmore was not a rich peer, Craythew was a fine old
place, and could put up at least thirty guests without crowding them
and without causing that most uncomfortable condition of things in
which people run over each other from morning to night during week-end
parties in the season, when there is no hunting or shooting to keep
the men out all day. The house itself was two or three times as big as
Mr. Van Torp's at Oxley Paddox. It had its hall, its long drawing-room
for dancing, its library, its breakfast-room and its morning-room, its
billiard-room, sitting-room, and smoking-room, like many another big
English country house; but it had also a picture gallery, the library
was an historical collection that filled three good-sized rooms, and
it was completed by one which had always been called the study, beyond
which there were two little dwelling-rooms, at the end of the wing,
where the librarian had lived when there had been one. For the old
lord had been a bachelor and a book lover, but the present master of
the house, who was tremendously energetic and practical, took care of
the books himself. Now and then, when the house was almost full, a
guest was lodged in the former librarian's small apartment, and on the
present occasion Paul Griggs was to be put there, on the ground that
he was a man of letters and must be glad to be near books, and
also because he could not be supposed to be afraid of Lady Letitia
Foxwell's ghost, which was believed to have spent the nights in the
library for the last hundred and fifty years, more or less, ever since
the unhappy young girl had hanged herself there in the time of George
the Second, on the eve of her wedding day.

The ancient house stood more than a mile from the high road, near the
further end of such a park as is rarely to be seen, even in beautiful
Derbyshire, for the Foxwells had always loved their trees, as good
Englishmen should, and had taken care of them. There were ancient oaks
there, descended by less than four tree-generations from Druid times;
all down the long drive the great elms threw their boughs skywards;
there the solemn beeches grew, the gentler ash, and the lime; there
the yews spread out their branches, and here and there the cedar of
Lebanon, patriarch of all trees that bear cones, reared his royal
crown above the rest; in and out, too, amongst the great boulders that
strewed the park, the sharp-leaved holly stood out boldly, and the
exquisite white thorn, all in flower, shot up to three and four times
a man's height; below, the heather grew close and green to blossom in
the summer-time; and in the deeper, lonelier places the blackthorn and
hoe ran wild, and the dog-rose in wild confusion; the alder and the
gorse too, the honeysuckle and ivy, climbed up over rocks and stems;
you might see a laurel now and then, and bilberry bushes by thousands,
and bracken everywhere in an endless profusion of rich, dark-green
lace.

Squirrels there were, dashing across the open glades and running up
the smooth beeches and chestnut trees, as quick as light, and rabbits,
dodging in and out amongst the ferns, and just showing the snow-white
patch under their little tails as they disappeared, and now and again
the lordly deer stepping daintily and leisurely through the deep fern;
all these lived in the wonderful depths of Craythew Park, and of birds
there was no end. There were game birds and song birds, from the
handsome pheasants to the modest little partridges, the royalists and
the puritans of the woods, from the love-lorn wood-pigeon, cooing in
the tall firs, to the thrush and the blackbird, making long hops as
they quartered the ground for grubs; and the robin, the linnet, and
little Jenny Wren all lived there in riotous plenty of worms and
snails; and nearer to the great house the starlings and jackdaws shot
down in a great hurry from the holes in old trees where they had their
nests, and many of them came rushing from their headquarters in the
ruined tower by the stream to waddle about the open lawns in their
ungainly fashion, vain because they were not like swallows, but could
really walk when they chose, though they did it rather badly. And
where the woods ended they were lined with rhododendrons, and lilacs,
and laburnum. There are even bigger parks in England than Craythew,
but there is none more beautiful, none richer in all sweet and good
things that live, none more musical with song of birds, not one that
more deeply breathes the world's oldest poetry.

Lady Maud went out on foot that afternoon and met Van Torp in the
drive, half a mile from the house. He came in his motor car with Miss
More and Ida, who was to go back after tea. It was by no means the
first time that they had been at Craythew; the little girl loved
nature, and understood by intuition much that would have escaped a
normal child. It was her greatest delight to come over in the motor
and spend two or three hours in the park, and when none of the family
were in the country she was always free to come and go, with Miss
More, as she pleased.

Lady Maud kissed her kindly and shook hands with her teacher before
the car went on to leave Mr. Van Torp's things at the house. Then the
two walked slowly along the road, and neither spoke for some time, nor
looked at the other, but both kept their eyes on the ground before
them, as if expecting something.

Mr. Van Torp's hands were in his pockets, his soft straw hat was
pushed rather far back on his sandy head, and as he walked he breathed
an American tune between his teeth, raising one side of his upper lip
to let the faint sound pass freely without turning itself into a real
whistle. It is rather a Yankee trick, and is particularly offensive to
some people, but Lady Maud did not mind it at all, though she heard it
distinctly. It always meant that Mr. Van Torp was in deep thought, and
she guessed that, just then, he was thinking more about her than of
himself. In his pocket he held in his right hand a small envelope
which he meant to bring out presently and give to her, where nobody
would be likely to see them.

Presently, when the motor had turned to the left, far up the long
drive, he raised his eyes and looked about him. He had the sight of a
man who has lived in the wilderness, and not only sees, but knows how
to see, which is a very different thing. Having satisfied himself, he
withdrew the envelope and held it out to his companion.

'I thought you might just as well have some more money,' he said, 'so
I brought you some. I may want to sail any minute. I don't know. Yes,
you'd better take it.'

Lady Maud had looked up quickly and had hesitated to receive the
envelope, but when he finished speaking she took it quickly and
slipped it into the opening of her long glove, pushing it down till
it lay in the palm of her hand. She fastened the buttons before she
spoke.

'How thoughtful you always are for me!'

She unconsciously used the very words with which she had thanked him
in Hare Court the last time he had given her money. The tone told him
how deeply grateful she was.

'Well,' he said in answer, 'as far as that goes, it's for you
yourself, as much as if I didn't know where it went; and if I'm
obliged to sail suddenly I don't want you to be out of your
reckoning.'

'You're much too good, Rufus. Do you really mean that you may have to
go back at once, to defend yourself?'

'No, not exactly that. But business is business, and somebody
responsible has got to be there, since poor old Bamberger has gone
crazy and come abroad to stay--apparently.'

'Crazy?'

'Well, he behaves like it, anyway. I'm beginning to be sorry for that
man. I'm in earnest. You mayn't believe it, but I really am. Kind of
unnatural, isn't it, for me to be sorry for people?'

He looked steadily at Lady Maud for a moment, then smiled faintly,
looked away, and began to blow his little tune through his teeth
again.

'You were sorry for little Ida,' suggested Lady Maud.

'That's different. I--I liked her mother a good deal, and when the
child was turned adrift I sort of looked after her. Anybody'd do that,
I expect.'

'And you're sorry for me, in a way,' said Lady Maud.

'You're different, too. You're my friend. I suppose you're about the
only one I've got, too. We can't complain of being crowded out of
doors by our friends, either of us, can we? Besides, I shouldn't put
it in that way, or call it being sorry, exactly. It's another kind of
feeling I have. I'd like to undo your life and make it over again for
you, the right way, so that you'd be happy. I can do a great deal, but
all the cursed nickel in the world won't bring back the--' he checked
himself suddenly, shutting his hard lips with an audible clack, and
looking down. 'I beg your pardon, my dear,' he said in a low voice, a
moment later.

For he had been very near to speaking of the dead, and he felt
instinctively that the rough speech, however kindly meant, would have
pained her, and perhaps had already hurt her a little. But as she
looked down, too, her hand gently touched the sleeve of his coat to
tell him that there was nothing to forgive.

'He knows,' she said, more softly than sadly. 'Where he is, they know
about us--when we try to do right.'

'And you haven't only tried,' Van Torp answered quietly, 'you've done
it.'

'Have I?' It sounded as if she asked the question of herself, or of
some one to whom she appealed in her heart. 'I often wonder,' she
added thoughtfully.

'You needn't worry,' said her companion, more cheerily than he had yet
spoken. 'Do you want to know why I think you needn't fuss about your
conscience and your soul, and things?'

He smiled now, and so did she, but more at the words he used than at
the question itself.

'Yes,' she said. 'I should like to know why.'

'It's a pretty good sign for a lady's soul when a lot of poor
creatures bless her every minute of their lives for fishing them out
of the mud and landing them in a decent life. Come, isn't it now? You
know it is. That's all. No further argument's necessary. The jury is
satisfied and the verdict is that you needn't fuss. So that's that,
and let's talk about something else.'

'I'm not so sure,' Lady Maud answered. 'Is it right to bribe people to
do right? Sometimes it has seemed very like that!'

'I don't set up to be an expert in morality,' retorted Van Torp, 'but
if money, properly used, can prevent murder, I guess that's better
than letting the murder be committed. You must allow that. The
same way with other crimes, isn't it? And so on, down to mere
misdemeanours, till you come to ordinary morality. Now what have you
got to say? If it isn't much better for the people themselves to lead
decent lives just for money's sake, it's certainly much better
for everybody else that they should. That appears to me to be
unanswerable. You didn't start in with the idea of making those poor
things just like you, I suppose. You can't train a cart-horse to win
the Derby. Yet all their nonsense about equality rests on the theory
that you can. You can't make a good judge out of a criminal, no
matter how the criminal repents of his crimes. He's not been born the
intellectual equal of the man who's born to judge him. His mind is
biassed. Perhaps he's a degenerate--everything one isn't oneself is
called degenerate nowadays. It helps things, I suppose. And you can't
expect to collect a lot of poor wretches together and manufacture
first-class Magdalens out of ninety-nine per cent of them, because
you're the one that needs no repentance, can you? I forget whether the
Bible says it was ninety-nine who did or ninety-nine who didn't,
but you'll understand my drift, I daresay. It's logic, if it isn't
Scripture. All right. As long as you can stop the evil, without doing
wrong yourself, you're bringing about a good result. So don't fuss.
See?'

'Yes, I see!' Lady Maud smiled. 'But it's your money that does it!'

'That's nothing,' Van Torp said, as if he disliked the subject.

He changed it effectually by speaking of his own present intentions
and explaining to his friend what he meant to do.

His point of view seemed to be that Bamberger was quite mad since his
daughter's death, and had built up a sensational but clumsy case, with
the help of the man Feist, whose evidence, as a confirmed dipsomaniac,
would be all but worthless. It was possible, Van Torp said, that Miss
Bamberger had been killed; in fact, Griggs' evidence alone would
almost prove it. But the chances were a thousand to one that she had
been killed by a maniac. Such murders were not so uncommon as Lady
Maud might think. The police in all countries know how many cases
occur which can be explained only on that theory, and how diabolically
ingenious madmen are in covering their tracks.

Lady Maud believed all he told her, and had perfect faith in his
innocence, but she knew instinctively that he was not telling her all;
and the certainty that he was keeping back something made her nervous.

In due time the other guests came; each in turn met Mr. Van Torp soon
after arriving, if not at the moment when they entered the house; and
they shook hands with him, and almost all knew why he was there, but
those who did not were soon told by the others.

The fact of having been asked to a country house for the express
purpose of being shown by ocular demonstration that something is 'all
right' which has been very generally said or thought to be all wrong,
does not generally contribute to the light-heartedness of such
parties. Moreover, the very young element was hardly represented, and
there was a dearth of those sprightly boys and girls who think it the
acme of delicate wit to shut up an aunt in the ice-box and throw the
billiard-table out of the window. Neither Lady Maud nor her father
liked what Mr. Van Torp called a 'circus'; and besides, the modern
youths and maids who delight in practical jokes were not the people
whose good opinion about the millionaire it was desired to obtain, or
to strengthen, as the case might be. The guests, far from being what
Lady Maud's brothers called a menagerie, were for the most part of the
graver sort whose approval weighs in proportion as they are themselves
social heavyweights. There was the Leader of the House, there were
a couple of members of the Cabinet, there was the Master of the
Foxhounds, there was the bishop of the diocese, and there was one of
the big Derbyshire landowners; there was an ex-governor-general
of something, an ex-ambassador to the United States, and a famous
general; there was a Hebrew financier of London, and Logotheti, the
Greek financier from Paris, who were regarded as colleagues of Van
Torp, the American financier; there was the scientific peer who had
dined at the Turkish Embassy with Lady Maud, there was the peer whose
horse had just won the Derby, and there was the peer who knew German
and was looked upon as the coming man in the Upper House. Many had
their wives with them, and some had lost their wives or could not
bring them; but very few were looking for a wife, and there were no
young women looking for husbands, since the Señorita da Cordova was
apparently not to be reckoned with those.

Now at this stage of my story it would be unpardonable to keep my
readers in suspense, if I may suppose that any of them have a little
curiosity left. Therefore I shall not narrate in detail what happened
on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, seeing that it was just what might
have been expected to happen at a week-end party during the season
when there is nothing in the world to do but to play golf, tennis, or
croquet, or to ride or drive all day, and to work hard at bridge all
the evening; for that is what it has come to.

Everything went very well till Sunday night, and most of the people
formed a much better opinion of Mr. Van Torp than those who had lately
read about him in the newspapers might have thought possible. The
Cabinet Ministers talked politics with him and found him sound--for
an American; the M.F.H. saw him ride, and felt for him exactly the
sympathy which a Don Cossack, a cowboy, and a Bedouin might feel for
each other if they met on horseback, and which needs no expression in
words; and the three distinguished peers liked him at once, because he
was not at all impressed by their social greatness, but was very
much interested in what they had to say respectively about science,
horse-breeding, and Herr Bebel. The great London financier, and he,
and Monsieur Logotheti exchanged casual remarks which all the men who
were interested in politics referred to mysterious loans that must
affect the armaments of the combined powers and the peace of Europe.

Mr. Van Torp kept away from the Primadonna, and she watched him
curiously, a good deal surprised to see that most of the others
liked him better than she had expected. She was rather agreeably
disappointed, too, at the reception she herself met with Lord
Creedmore spoke of her only as 'Miss Donne, the daughter of his oldest
friend,' and every one treated her accordingly. No one even mentioned
her profession, and possibly some of the guests did not quite realise
that she was the famous Cordova. Lady Maud never suggested that she
should sing, and Lord Creedmore detested music. The old piano in the
long drawing-room was hardly ever opened. It had been placed there in
Victorian days when 'a little music' was the rule, and since the happy
abolition of that form of terror it had been left where it stood, and
was tuned once a year, in case anybody should want a dance when there
were young people in the house.

A girl might as well master the Assyrian language in order to compose
hymns to Tiglath-Pileser as learn to play the piano nowadays, but
bridge is played at children's parties; let us not speak ill of the
Bridge that has carried us over.

Margaret was not out of her element; on the contrary, she at first
had the sensation of finding herself amongst rather grave and not
uncongenial English people, not so very different from those with whom
she had spent her early girlhood at Oxford. It was not strange to her,
but it was no longer familiar, and she missed the surroundings to
which she had grown accustomed. Hitherto, when she had been asked to
join such parties, there had been at least a few of those persons
who are supposed to delight especially in the society of sopranos,
actresses, and lionesses generally; but none of them were at Craythew.
She was suddenly transported back into regions where nobody seemed to
care a straw whether she could sing or not, where nobody flattered
her, and no one suggested that it would be amusing and instructive
to make a trip to Spain together, or that a charming little kiosk
at Therapia was at her disposal whenever she chose to visit the
Bosphorus.

There was only Logotheti to remind her of her everyday life,
for Griggs did not do so at all; he belonged much more to the
'atmosphere,' and though she knew that he had loved in his youth a
woman who had a beautiful voice, he understood nothing of music and
never talked about it. As for Lady Maud, Margaret saw much less of her
than she had expected; the hostess was manifestly preoccupied, and
was, moreover, obliged to give more of her time to her guests than
would have been necessary if they had been of the younger generation
or if the season had been winter.

Margaret noticed in herself a new phase of change with regard to
Logotheti, and she did not like it at all: he had become necessary to
her, and yet she was secretly a little ashamed of him. In that temple
of respectability where she found herself, in such 'a cloister of
social pillars' as Logotheti called the party, he was a discordant
figure. She was haunted by a painful doubt that if he had not been a
very important financier some of those quiet middle-aged Englishmen
might have thought him a 'bounder,' because of his ruby pin, his
summer-lightning waistcoats, and his almond-shaped eyes. It was very
unpleasant to be so strongly drawn to a man whom such people probably
thought a trifle 'off.'

It irritated her to be obliged to admit that the London financier, who
was a professed and professing Hebrew, was in appearance an English
gentleman, whereas Konstantinos Logotheti, with a pedigree of
Christian and not unpersecuted Fanariote ancestors, that went back to
Byzantine times without the least suspicion of any Semitic marriage,
might have been taken for a Jew in Lombard Street, and certainly would
have been thought one in Berlin. A man whose eyes suggested dark
almonds need not cover himself with jewellery and adorn himself
in naming colours, Margaret thought; and she resented his way of
dressing, much more than ever before. Lady Maud had called him exotic,
and Margaret could not forget that. By 'exotic' she was sure that her
friend meant something like vulgar, though Lady Maud said she liked
him.

But the events that happened at Craythew on Sunday evening threw such
insignificant details as these into the shade, and brought out the
true character of the chief actors, amongst whom Margaret very
unexpectedly found herself.

It was late in the afternoon after a really cloudless June day, and
she had been for a long ramble in the park with Lord Creedmore, who
had talked to her about her father and the old Oxford days, till all
her present life seemed to be a mere dream; and she could not realise,
as she went up to her room, that she was to go back to London on
the morrow, to the theatre, to rehearsals, to Pompeo Stromboli,
Schreiermeyer, and the public.

She met Logotheti in the gallery that ran round two sides of the hall,
and they both stopped and leaned over the balustrade to talk a little.

'It has been very pleasant,' she said thoughtfully. 'I'm sorry it's
over so soon.'

'Whenever you are inclined to lead this sort of life,' Logotheti
answered with a laugh, 'you need only drop me a line. You shall have
a beautiful old house and a big park and a perfect colonnade of
respectabilities--and I'll promise not to be a bore.'

Margaret looked at him earnestly for some seconds, and then asked a
very unexpected and frivolous question, because she simply could not
help it.

'Where did you get that tie?'

The question was strongly emphasised, for it meant much more to her
just then than he could possibly have guessed; perhaps it meant
something which was affecting her whole life. He laughed carelessly.

'It's better to dress like Solomon in all his glory than to be taken
for a Levantine gambler,' he answered. 'In the days when I was
simple-minded, a foreigner in a fur coat and an eyeglass once stopped
me in the Boulevard des Italiens and asked if I could give him the
address of any house where a roulette-table was kept! After that I
took to jewels and dress!'

Margaret wondered why she could not help liking him; and by sheer
force of habit she thought that he would make a very good-looking
stage Romeo.

While she was thinking of that and smiling in spite of his tie, the
old clock in the hall below chimed the hour, and it was a quarter to
seven; and at the same moment three men were getting out of a train
that had stopped at the Craythew station, three miles from Lord
Creedmore's gate.




CHAPTER XVIII


The daylight dinner was over, and the large party was more or less
scattered about the drawing-room and the adjoining picture-gallery
in groups of three and four, mostly standing while they drank their
coffee, and continued or finished the talk begun at table.

By force of habit Margaret had stopped beside the closed piano, and
had seated herself on the old-fashioned stool to have her coffee. Lady
Maud stood beside her, leaning against the corner of the instrument,
her cup in her hand, and the two young women exchanged rather idle
observations about the lovely day that was over, and the perfect
weather. Both were preoccupied and they did not look at each other;
Margaret's eyes watched Logotheti, who was half-way down the long
room, before a portrait by Sir Peter Lely, of which he was apparently
pointing out the beauties to the elderly wife of the scientific peer.
Lady Maud was looking out at the light in the sunset sky above the
trees beyond the flower-beds and the great lawn, for the piano stood
near an open window. From time to time she turned her head quickly
and glanced towards Van Torp, who was talking with her father at some
distance; then she looked out of the window again.

It was a warm evening; in the dusk of the big rooms the hum of voices
was low and pleasant, broken only now and then by Van Torp's more
strident tone. Outside it was still light, and the starlings and
blackbirds and thrushes were finishing their supper, picking up the
unwary worms and the tardy little snails, and making a good deal of
sweet noise about it.

Margaret set down her cup on the lid of the piano, and at the slight
sound Lady Maud turned towards her, so that their eyes met. Each
noticed the other's expression.

'What is it?' asked Lady Maud, with a little smile of friendly
concern. 'Is anything wrong?'

'No--that is--' Margaret smiled too, as she hesitated--'I was going to
ask you the same question,' she added quickly.

'It's nothing more than usual,' returned her friend. 'I think it
has gone very well, don't you, these three days? He has made a good
impression on everybody--don't you think so?'

'Oh yes!' Margaret answered readily. 'Excellent! Could not be better!
I confess to being surprised, just a little--I mean,' she corrected
herself hastily, 'after all the talk there has been, it might not have
turned out so easy.'

'Don't you feel a little less prejudiced against him yourself?' asked
Lady Maud.

'Prejudiced!' Margaret repeated the word thoughtfully. 'Yes, I suppose
I'm prejudiced against him. That's the only word. Perhaps it's hateful
of me, but I cannot help it--and I wish you wouldn't make me own it to
you, for it's humiliating! I'd like him, if I could, for your sake.
But you must take the wish for the deed.'

'That's better than nothing!' Lady Maud seemed to be trying to laugh
a little, but it was with an effort and there was no ripple in her
voice. 'You have something on your mind, too,' she went on, to change
the subject. 'Is anything troubling you?'

'Only the same old question. It's not worth mentioning!'

'To marry, or not to marry?'

'Yes. I suppose I shall take the leap some day, and probably in the
dark, and then I shall be sorry for it. Most of you have!'

She looked up at Lady Maud with a rather uncertain, flickering smile,
as if she wished her mind to be made up for her, and her hands lay
weakly in her lap, the palms almost upwards.

'Oh, don't ask me!' cried her friend, answering the look rather than
the words, and speaking with something approaching to vehemence.

'Do you wish you had waited for the other one till now?' asked
Margaret softly, but she did not know that he had been killed in South
Africa; she had never seen the shabby little photograph.

'Yes--for ever!'

That was all Lady Maud said, and the two words were not uttered
dramatically either, though gravely and without the least doubt.

The butler and two men appeared, to collect the coffee cups; the
former had a small salver in his hand and came directly to Lady Maud.
He brought a telegram for her.

'You don't mind, do you?' she asked Margaret mechanically, as she
opened it.

'Of course,' answered the other in the same tone, and she looked
through the open window while her friend read the message.

It was from the Embassy in London, and it informed her in the briefest
terms that Count Leven had been killed in St. Petersburg on the
previous day, in the street, by a bomb intended for a high official.
Lady Maud made no sound, but folded the telegram into a small square
and turned her back to the room for a moment in order to slip it
unnoticed into the body of her black velvet gown. As she recovered her
former attitude she was surprised to see that the butler was still
standing two steps from her where he had stopped after he had taken
the cups from the piano and set them on the small salver on which he
had brought the message. He evidently wanted to say something to her
alone.

Lady Maud moved away from the piano, and he followed her a little
beyond the window, till she stopped and turned to hear what he had to
say.

'There are three persons asking for Mr. Van Torp, my lady,' he said
in a very low tone, and she noticed the disturbed look in his face.
'They've got a motor-car waiting in the avenue.'

'What sort of people are they?' she asked quietly; but she felt that
she was pale.

'To tell the truth, my lady,' the butler spoke in a whisper, bending
his head, 'I think they are from Scotland Yard.'

Lady Maud knew it already; she had almost guessed it when she had
glanced at his face before he spoke at all.

'Show them into the old study,' she said, 'and ask them to wait a
moment.'

The butler went away with his two coffee cups, and scarcely any one
had noticed that Lady Maud had exchanged a few words with him by the
window. She turned back to the piano, where Margaret was still sitting
on the stool with her hands in her lap, looking at Logotheti in the
distance and wondering whether she meant to marry him or not.

'No bad news, I hope?' asked the singer, looking up as her friend came
to her side.

'Not very good,' Lady Maud answered, leaning her elbow on the piano.
'Should you mind singing something to keep the party together while
I talk to some tiresome men who are in the old study? On these June
evenings people have a way of wandering out into the garden after
dinner. I should like to keep every one in the house for a quarter
of an hour, and if you will only sing for them they won't stir. Will
you?'

Margaret looked at her curiously.

'I think I understand,' Margaret said. 'The people in the study are
asking for Mr. Van Torp.'

Lady Maud nodded, not surprised that Logotheti should have told the
Primadonna something about what he had been doing.

'Then you believe he is innocent,' she said confidently. 'Even though
you don't like him, you'll help me, won't you?'

'I'll do anything you ask me. But I should think--'

'No,' Lady Maud interrupted. 'He must not be arrested at all. I know
that he would rather face the detectives than run away, even for a
few hours, till the truth is known. But I won't let him. It would
be published all over the world to-morrow morning that he had been
arrested for murder in my father's house, and it would never be
forgotten against him, though he might be proved innocent ten times
over. That's what I want to prevent. Will you help me?'

As she spoke the last words she raised the front lid of the piano,
and Margaret turned on her seat towards the instrument to open the
keyboard, nodding her assent.

'Just play a little, till I am out of the room, and then sing,' said
Lady Maud.

The great artist's fingers felt the keys as her friend turned away.
Anything theatrical was natural to her now, and she began to play very
softly, watching the moving figure in black velvet as she would have
watched a fellow singer on the stage while waiting to go on.

Lady Maud did not speak to Van Torp first, but to Griggs, and then to
Logotheti, and the two men slipped away together and disappeared. Then
she came back to Van Torp, smiling pleasantly. He was still talking
with Lord Creedmore, but the latter, at a word from his daughter, went
off to the elderly peeress whom Logotheti had abruptly left alone
before the portrait.

Margaret did not hear what Lady Maud said to the American, but it was
evidently not yet a warning, for her smile did not falter, and he
looked pleased as he came back with her, and they passed near the
piano to go out through the open window upon the broad flagged terrace
that separated the house from the flower-beds.

The Primadonna played a little louder now, so that every one heard the
chords, even in the picture-gallery, and a good many men were rather
bored at the prospect of music.

Then the Señorita da Cordova raised her head and looked over the grand
piano, and her lips parted, and boredom vanished very suddenly; for
even those who did not take much pleasure in the music were amazed by
the mere sound of her voice and by its incredible flexibility.

She meant to astonish her hearers and keep them quiet, and she knew
what to sing to gain her end, and how to sing it. Those who have not
forgotten the story of her beginnings will remember that she was a
thorough musician as well as a great singer, and was one of those
very few primadonnas who are able to accompany themselves from memory
without a false note through any great piece they know, from _Lucia_
to _Parsifal_.

She began with the waltz song in the first act of _Romeo and Juliet_.
It was the piece that had revealed her talent to Madame Bonanni, who
had accidentally overheard her singing to herself, and it suited her
purpose admirably. Such fireworks could not fail to astound, even if
they did not please, and half the full volume of her voice was more
than enough for the long drawing-room, into which the whole party
gathered almost as soon as she began to sing. Such trifles as having
just dined, or having just waked up in the morning, have little
influence on the few great natural voices of the world, which begin
with twice the power and beauty that the 'built-up' ones acquire in
years of study. Ordinary people go to a concert, to the opera, to a
circus, to university sports, and hear and see things that interest or
charm, or sometimes surprise them; but they are very much amazed if
they ever happen to find out in private life what a really great
professional of any sort can do at a pinch, if put to it by any strong
motive. If it had been necessary, Margaret could have sung to the
party in the drawing-room at Craythew for an hour at a stretch with no
more rest than her accompaniments afforded.

Her hearers were the more delighted because it was so spontaneous, and
there was not the least affectation about it. During these days no one
had even suggested that she should make music, or be anything except
the 'daughter of Lord Creedmore's old friend.' But now, apparently,
she had sat down to the piano to give them all a concert, for the
sheer pleasure of singing, and they were not only pleased with her,
but with themselves; for the public, and especially audiences, are
more easily flattered by a great artist who chooses to treat his
hearers as worthy of his best, than the artist himself is by the
applause he hears for the thousandth time.

So the Señorita da Cordova held the party at Craythew spellbound while
other things were happening very near them which would have interested
them much more than her trills, and her 'mordentini,' and her soaring
runs, and the high staccato notes that rang down from the ceiling as
if some astounding and invisible instrument were up there, supported
by an unseen force.

Meanwhile Paul Griggs and Logotheti had stopped a moment in the first
of the rooms that contained the library, on their way to the old study
beyond.

It was almost dark amongst the huge oak bookcases, and both men
stopped at the same moment by a common instinct, to agree quickly upon
some plan of action. They had led adventurous lives, and were not
likely to stick at trifles, if they believed themselves to be in
the right; but if they had left the drawing-room with the distinct
expectation of anything like a fight, they would certainly not have
stopped to waste their time in talking.

The Greek spoke first.

'Perhaps you had better let me do the talking,' he said.

'By all means,' answered Griggs. 'I am not good at that. I'll keep
quiet, unless we have to handle them.'

'All right, and if you have any trouble I'll join in and help you.
Just set your back against the door if they try to get out while I am
speaking.'

'Yes.'

That was all, and they went on in the gathering gloom, through the
three rooms of the library, to the door of the old study, from which a
short winding staircase led up to the two small rooms which Griggs was
occupying.

Three quiet men in dark clothes were standing together in the
twilight, in the bay window at the other side of the room, and they
moved and turned their heads quickly as the door opened. Logotheti
went up to them, while Griggs remained near the door, looking on.

'What can I do for you?' inquired the Greek, with much urbanity.

'We wished to speak with Mr. Van Torp, who is stopping here,' answered
the one of the three men who stood farthest forward.

'Oh yes, yes!' said Logotheti at once, as if assenting. 'Certainly!
Lady Maud Leven, Lord Creedmore's daughter--Lady Creedmore is away,
you know--has asked us to inquire just what you want of Mr. Van Torp.'

'It's a personal matter,' replied the spokesman. 'I will explain it to
him, if you will kindly ask him to come here a moment.'

Logotheti smiled pleasantly.

'Quite so,' he said. 'You are, no doubt, reporters, and wish to
interview him. As a personal friend of his, and between you and me,
I don't think he'll see you. You had better write and ask for an
appointment. Don't you think so, Griggs?'

The author's large, grave features relaxed in a smile of amusement as
he nodded his approval of the plan.

'We do not represent the press,' answered the man.

'Ah! Indeed? How very odd! But of course--' Logotheti pretended to
understand suddenly--'how stupid of me! No doubt you are from the
bank. Am I not right?'

'No. You are mistaken. We are not from Threadneedle Street.'

'Well, then, unless you will enlighten me, I really cannot imagine who
you are or where you come from!'

'We wish to speak in private with Mr. Van Torp.'

'In private, too?' Logotheti shook his head, and turned to Griggs.
'Really, this looks rather suspicious; don't you think so?'

Griggs said nothing, but the smile became a broad grin.

The spokesman, on his side, turned to his two companions and
whispered, evidently consulting them as to the course he should
pursue.

'Especially after the warning Lord Creedmore has received,' said
Logotheti to Griggs in a very audible tone, as if explaining his last
speech.

The man turned to him again and spoke in a gravely determined tone--

'I must really insist upon seeing Mr. Van Torp immediately,' he said.

'Yes, yes, I quite understand you,' answered Logotheti, looking at him
with a rather pitying smile, and then turning to Griggs again, as if
for advice.

The elder man was much amused by the ease with which the Greek had so
far put off the unwelcome visitors and gained time; but he saw that
the scene must soon come to a crisis, and prepared for action, keeping
his eye on the three, in case they should make a dash at the door that
communicated with the rest of the house.

During the two or three seconds that followed, Logotheti reviewed the
situation. It would be an easy matter to trick the three men into the
short winding staircase that led up to the rooms Griggs occupied, and
if the upper and lower doors were locked and barricaded, the prisoners
could not forcibly get out. But it was certain that the leader of the
party had a warrant about him, and this must be taken from him before
locking him up, and without any acknowledgment of its validity; for
even the lawless Greek was aware that it was not good to interfere
with officers of the law in the execution of their duty. If there had
been more time he might have devised some better means of attaining
his end than occurred to him just then.

'They must be the lunatics,' he said to Griggs, with the utmost calm.

The spokesman started and stared, and his jaw dropped. For a moment he
could not speak.

'You know Lord Creedmore was warned this morning that a number had
escaped from the county asylum,' continued Logotheti, still speaking
to Griggs, and pretending to lower his voice.

'Lunatics?' roared the man when he got his breath, exasperated out of
his civil manner. 'Lunatics, sir? We are from Scotland Yard, sir, I'd
have you know!'

'Yes, yes,' answered the Greek, 'we quite understand. Humour them,
my dear chap,' he added in an undertone that was meant to be heard.
'Yes,' he continued in a cajoling tone, 'I guessed at once that
you were from police headquarters. If you'll kindly show me your
warrant--'

He stopped politely, and nudged Griggs with his elbow, so that the
detectives should be sure to see the movement. The chief saw the
awkwardness of his own position, measured the bony veteran and the
athletic foreigner with his eye, and judged that if the two were
convinced that they were dealing with madmen they would make a pretty
good fight.

'Excuse me,' the officer said, speaking calmly, 'but you are under a
gross misapprehension about us. This paper will remove it at once, I
trust, and you will not hinder us in the performance of an unpleasant
duty.'

He produced an official envelope, handed it to Logotheti, and waited
for the result.

It was unexpected when it came. Logotheti took the paper, and as it
was now almost dark he looked about for the key of the electric
light. Griggs was now close to him by the door through which they had
entered, and behind which the knob was placed.

'If I can get them upstairs, lock and barricade the lower door,'
whispered the Greek as he turned up the light.

He took the paper under a bracket light on the other side of the room,
beside the door of the winding stair, and began to read.

His face was a study, and Griggs watched it, wondering what was
coming. As Logotheti read and reread the few short sentences, he was
apparently seized by a fit of mirth which he struggled in vain to
repress, and which soon broke out into uncontrollable laughter.

'The cleverest trick you ever saw!' he managed to get out between his
paroxysms.

It was so well done that the detective was seriously embarrassed; but
after a moment's hesitation he judged that he ought to get his warrant
back at all hazards, and he moved towards Logotheti with a menacing
expression.

But the Greek, pretending to be afraid that the supposed lunatic was
going to attack him, uttered an admirable yell of fear, opened the
door close at his hand, rushed through, slammed it behind him, and
fled up the dark stairs.

The detective lost no time, and followed in hot pursuit, his two
companions tearing up after him into the darkness. Then Griggs quietly
turned the key in the lock, for he was sure that Logotheti had
reached the top in time to fasten the upper door, and must be
already barricading it. Griggs proceeded to do the same, quietly and
systematically, and the great strength he had not yet lost served him
well, for the furniture in the room was heavy. In a couple of minutes
it would have needed sledge-hammers and crowbars to break out by the
lower entrance, even if the lock had not been a solid one.

Griggs then turned out the lights, and went quietly back through the
library to the other part of the house to find Lady Maud.

Logotheti, having meanwhile made the upper door perfectly secure,
descended by the open staircase to the hall, and sent the first
footman he met to call the butler, with whom he said he wished to
speak. The butler came at once.

'Lady Maud asked me to see those three men,' said Logotheti in a low
tone. 'Mr. Griggs and I are convinced that they are lunatics escaped
from the asylum, and we have locked them up securely in the staircase
beyond the study.'

'Yes, sir,' said the butler, as if Logotheti had been explaining how
he wished his shoe-leather to be treated.

'I think you had better telephone for the doctor, and explain
everything to him over the wire without speaking to Lord Creedmore
just yet.'

'Yes, sir.'

'How long will it take the doctor to get here?'

'Perhaps an hour, sir, if he's at home. Couldn't say precisely, sir.'

'Very good. There is no hurry; and of course her ladyship will be
particularly anxious that none of her friends should guess what has
happened; you see there would be a general panic if it were known that
there are escaped lunatics in the house.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Perhaps you had better take a couple of men you can trust, and pile
up some more furniture against the doors, above and below. One cannot
be too much on the safe side in such cases.'

'Yes, sir. I'll do it at once, sir.'

Logotheti strolled back towards the gallery in a very unconcerned way.
As for the warrant, he had burnt it in the empty fireplace in Griggs'
room after making all secure, and had dusted down the black ashes so
carefully that they had quite disappeared under the grate. After all,
as the doctor would arrive in the firm expectation of finding three
escaped madmen under lock and key, the Scotland Yard men might
have some difficulty in proving themselves sane until they could
communicate with their headquarters, and by that time Mr. Van Torp
could be far on his way if he chose.

When Logotheti reached the door of the drawing-room, Margaret was
finishing Rosina's Cavatina from the _Barbiere di Siviglia_ in a
perfect storm of fireworks, having transposed the whole piece two
notes higher to suit her own voice, for it was originally written for
a mezzo-soprano.

Lady Maud and Van Torp had gone out upon the terrace unnoticed a
moment before Margaret had begun to sing. The evening was still and
cloudless, and presently the purple twilight would pale under the
summer moon, and the garden and the lawns would be once more as bright
as day. The friends walked quickly, for Lady Maud set the pace and led
Van Torp toward the trees, where the stables stood, quite hidden from
the house. As soon as she reached the shade she stood still and spoke
in a low voice.

'You have waited too long,' she said. 'Three men have come to arrest
you, and their motor is over there in the avenue.'

'Where are they?' inquired the American, evidently not at all
disturbed. 'I'll see them at once, please.'

'And give yourself up?'

'I don't care.'

'Here?'

'Why not? Do you suppose I am going to run away? A man who gets out in
a hurry doesn't usually look innocent, does he?'

Lady Maud asserted herself.

'You must think of me and of my father,' she said in a tone of
authority Van Torp had never heard from her. 'I know you're as
innocent as I am, but after all that has been said and written about
you, and about you and me together, it's quite impossible that you
should let yourself be arrested in our house, in the midst of a party
that has been asked here expressly to be convinced that my father
approves of you. Do you see that?'

'Well--' Mr. Van Torp hesitated, with his thumbs in his waistcoat
pockets.

Across the lawn, from the open window, Margaret's voice rang out like
a score of nightingales in unison.

'There's no time to discuss it,' Lady Maud said. 'I asked her to sing,
so as to keep the people together. Before she has finished, you must
be out of reach.'

Mr. Van Torp smiled. 'You're remarkably positive about it,' he said.

'You must get to town before the Scotland Yard people, and I don't
know how much start they will give you. It depends on how long Mr.
Griggs and Logotheti can keep them in the old study. It will be neck
and neck, I fancy. I'll go with you to the stables. You must ride to
your own place as hard as you can, and go up to London in your
car to-night. The roads are pretty clear on Sundays, and there's
moonlight, so you will have no trouble. It will be easy to say here
that you have been called away suddenly. Come, you must go!'

Lady Maud moved towards the stables, and Van Torp was obliged to
follow her. Far away Margaret was singing the last bars of the waltz
song.

'I must say,' observed Mr. Van Torp thoughtfully, as they walked on,
'for a lady who's generally what I call quite feminine, you make a man
sit up pretty quick.'

'It's not exactly the time to choose for loafing,' answered Lady Maud.
'By the bye,' she added, 'you may as well know. Poor Leven is dead. I
had a telegram a few minutes ago. He was killed yesterday by a bomb
meant for somebody else.'

Van Torp stood still, and Lady Maud stopped with evident reluctance.

'And there are people who don't believe in Providence,' he said
slowly. 'Well, I congratulate you anyway.'

'Hush, the poor man is dead. We needn't talk about him. Come, there's
no time to lose!' She moved impatiently.

'So you're a widow!' Van Torp seemed to be making the remark to
himself without expecting any answer, but it at once suggested a
question. 'And now what do you propose to do?' he inquired. 'But I
expect you'll be a nun, or something. I'd like you to arrange so that
I can see you sometimes, will you?'

'I'm not going to disappear yet,' Lady Maud answered gravely.

They reached the stables, which occupied three sides of a square yard.
At that hour the two grooms and the stable-boy were at their supper,
and the coachman had gone home to his cottage. A big brown retriever
on a chain was sitting bolt upright beside his kennel, and began to
thump the flagstones with his tail as soon as he recognised Lady Maud.
From within a fox-terrier barked two or three times. Lady Maud opened
a door, and he sprang out at her yapping, but was quiet as soon as he
knew her.

'You'd better take the Lancashire Lass,' she said to Van Torp. 'You're
heavier than my father, but it's not far to ride, and she's a clever
creature.'

She had turned up the electric light while speaking, for it was dark
inside the stable; she got a bridle, went into the box herself, and
slipped it over the mare's pretty head. Van Torp saw that it was
useless to offer help.

'Don't bother about a saddle,' he said; 'it's a waste of time.'

He touched the mare's face and lips with his hand, and she understood
him, and let him lead her out. He vaulted upon her back, and Lady Maud
walked beside him till they were outside the yard.

'If you had a high hat it would look like the circus,' she said,
glancing at his evening dress. 'Now get away! I'll be in town on
Tuesday; let me know what happens. Good-bye! Be sure to let me know.'

'Yes. Don't worry. I'm only going because you insist, anyhow.
Good-bye. God bless you!'

He waved his hand, the mare sprang forward, and in a few seconds he
was out of sight amongst the trees. Lady Maud listened to the regular
sound of the galloping hoofs on the turf, and at the same time from
very far off she heard Margaret's high trills and quick staccato
notes. At that moment the moon was rising through the late twilight,
and a nightingale high overhead, no doubt judging her little self to
be quite as great a musician as the famous Cordova, suddenly began
a very wonderful piece of her own, just half a tone higher than
Margaret's, which might have distressed a sensitive musician, but did
not jar in the least on Lady Maud's ear.

Now that she had sent Van Torp on his way, she would gladly have
walked alone in the park for half an hour to collect her thoughts; but
people who live in the world are rarely allowed any pleasant leisure
when they need it, and many of the most dramatic things in real life
happen when we are in such a hurry that we do not half understand
them. So the moment that should have been the happiest of all goes
dashing by when we are hastening to catch a train; so the instant of
triumph after years of labour or weeks of struggling is upon us when
we are perhaps positively obliged to write three important notes
in twenty minutes; and sometimes, too, and mercifully, the pain of
parting is numbed just as the knife strikes the nerve, by the howling
confusion of a railway station that forces us to take care of
ourselves and our belongings; and when the first instant of joy, or
victory, or acute suffering is gone in a flash, memory never quite
brings back all the happiness nor all the pain.

Lady Maud could not have stayed away many minutes longer. She went
back at once, entered by the garden window just as Margaret was
finishing Rosina's song, and remained standing behind her till she
had sung the last note. English people rarely applaud conventional
drawing-room music, but this had been something more, and the Craythew
guests clapped their hands loudly, and even the elderly wife of the
scientific peer emitted distinctly audible sounds of satisfaction.
Lady Maud bent her handsome head and kissed the singer affectionately,
whispering words of heartfelt thanks.




CHAPTER XIX


Through the mistaken efforts of Isidore Bamberger, justice had got
herself into difficulties, and it was as well for her reputation,
which is not good nowadays, that the public never heard what happened
on that night at Craythew, how the three best men who had been
available at headquarters were discomfited in their well-meant attempt
to arrest an innocent man, and how they spent two miserable hours
together locked up in a dark winding staircase. For it chanced, as
it will chance to the end of time, that the doctor was out when the
butler telephoned to him; it happened, too, that he was far from home,
engaged in ushering a young gentleman of prosperous parentage into
this world, an action of which the kindness might be questioned,
considering that the poor little soul presumably came straight from
paradise, with an indifferent chance of ever getting there again. So
the doctor could not come.

The three men were let out in due time, however, and as no trace of a
warrant could be discovered at that hour, Logotheti and Griggs being
already sound asleep, and as Lord Creedmore, in his dressing-gown and
slippers, gave them a written statement to the effect that Mr. Van
Torp was no longer at Craythew, they had no choice but to return to
town, rather the worse for wear. What they said to each other by the
way may safely be left to the inexhaustible imagination of a gentle
and sympathising reader.

Their suppressed rage, their deep mortification, and their profound
disgust were swept away in their overwhelming amazement, however,
when they found that Mr. Rufus Van Torp, whom they had sought in
Derbyshire, was in Scotland Yard before them, closeted with their
Chief and explaining what an odd mistake the justice of two nations
had committed in suspecting him to have been at the Metropolitan
Opera-House in New York at the time of the explosion, since he had
spent that very evening in Washington, in the private study of the
Secretary of the Treasury, who wanted his confidential opinion on a
question connected with Trusts before he went abroad. Mr. Van Torp
stuck his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and blandly insisted that
the cables should be kept red-hot--at international expense--till the
member of the Cabinet in Washington should answer corroborating the
statement. Four o'clock in the morning in London was only eleven
o'clock of the previous evening, Mr. Van Torp explained, and it was
extremely unlikely that the Secretary of the Treasury should be in
bed so early. If he was, he was certainly not asleep; and with the
facilities at the disposal of governments there was no reason why the
answer should not come back in forty minutes.

It was impossible to resist such simple logic. The lines were cleared
for urgent official business between London and Washington, and in
less than an hour the answer came back, to the effect that Mr. Rufus
Van Torp's statement was correct in every detail; and without any
interval another official message arrived, revoking the request
for his extradition, which 'had been made under a most unfortunate
misapprehension, due to the fact that Mr. Van Torp's visit to the
Secretary of the Treasury had been regarded as confidential by the
latter.'

Scotland Yard expressed its regret, and Mr. Van Torp smiled and begged
to be allowed, before leaving, to 'shake hands' with the three men who
had been put to so much inconvenience on his account. This democratic
proposal was promptly authorised, to the no small satisfaction and
profit of the three haggard officials. So Mr. Van Torp went away,
and in a few minutes he was sound asleep in the corner of his big
motor-car on his way back to Derbyshire.

Lady Maud found Margaret and Logotheti walking slowly together under
the trees about eleven o'clock on the following morning. Some of the
people were already gone, and most of the others were to leave in the
course of the day. Lady Maud had just said good-bye to a party of ten
who were going off together, and she had not had a chance to speak to
Margaret, who had come down late, after her manner. Most great singers
are portentous sleepers. As for Logotheti, he always had coffee in his
room wherever he was, he never appeared at breakfast, and he got rid
of his important correspondence for the day before coming down.

'I've had a letter from Threlfall,' he said as Lady Maud came up. 'I
was just telling Miss Donne about it. Feist died in Dr. Bream's Home
yesterday afternoon.'

'Rather unfortunate at this juncture, isn't it?' observed Margaret.

But Lady Maud looked shocked and glanced at Logotheti as if asking a
question.

'No,' said the Greek, answering her thought. 'I did not kill him, poor
devil! He did it himself, out of fright, I think. So that side of the
affair ends. He had some sealed glass capsules of hydrocyanide of
potassium in little brass tubes, sewn up in the lining of a waistcoat,
and he took one, and must have died instantly. I believe the stuff
turns into prussic acid, or something of that sort, when you swallow
it--Griggs will know.'

'How dreadful!' exclaimed Lady Maud. 'I'm sure you drove him to it!'

'I'll bear the responsibility of having rid the world of him, if I
did. But my share consisted in having given him opium and then stopped
it suddenly, till he surrendered and told the truth--or a large part
of it--what I have told you already. He would not own that he killed
Miss Bamberger himself with the rusty little knife that had a few red
silk threads sticking to the handle. He must have put it back into his
case of instruments as it was, and he never had the courage to look
at it again. He had studied medicine, I believe. But he confessed
everything else, how he had been madly in love with the poor girl when
he was her father's secretary, and how she treated him like a servant
and made her father turn him out, and how he hated Van Torp furiously
for being engaged to marry her. He hated the Nickel Trust, too,
because he had thought the shares were going down and had risked
the little he had as margin on a drop, and had lost it all by the
unexpected rise. He drank harder after that, till he was getting silly
from it, when the girl's death gave him his chance against Van Torp,
and he manufactured the evidence in the diary he kept, and went to
Bamberger with it and made the poor man believe whatever he invented.
He told me all that, with a lot of details, but I could not make him
admit that he had killed the girl himself, so I gave him his opium and
he went to sleep. That's my story. Or rather, it's his, as I got it
from him last Thursday. I supposed there was plenty of time, but Mr.
Bamberger seems to have been in a hurry after we had got Feist into
the Home.'

'Had you told Mr. Van Torp all this?' asked Lady Maud anxiously.

'No,' Logotheti answered. 'I was keeping the information ready in case
it should be needed.'

A familiar voice spoke behind them.

'Well, it's all right as it is. Much obliged, all the same.'

All three turned suddenly and saw that Mr. Van Torp had crept up while
they were talking, and the expression of his tremendous mouth showed
that he had meant to surprise them, and was pleased with his success
in doing so.

'Really!' exclaimed Lady Maud.

'Goodness gracious!' cried the Primadonna.

'By the Dog of Egypt!' laughed Logotheti.

'Don't know the breed,' answered Van Torp, not understanding, but
cheerfully playful. 'Was it a trick dog?'

'I thought you were in London,' Margaret said.

'I was. Between one and four this morning, I should say. It's all
right.' He nodded to Lady Maud as he spoke the last words, but he did
not seem inclined to say more.

'Is it a secret?' she asked.

'I never have secrets,' answered the millionaire. 'Secrets are
everything that must be found out and put in the paper right away,
ain't they? But I had no trouble at all, only the bother of waiting
till the office got an answer from the other side. I happened to
remember where I'd spent the evening of the explosion, that's all, and
they cabled sharp and found my statement correct.'

'Why did you never tell me?' asked Lady Maud reproachfully. 'You knew
how anxious I was!'

'Well,' replied Mr. Van Torp, dwelling long on the syllable, 'I did
tell you it was all right anyhow, whatever they did, and I thought
maybe you'd accept the statement. The man I spent that evening with is
a public man, and he mightn't exactly think our interview was anybody
else's business, might he?'

'And you say you never keep a secret!'

The delicious ripple was in Lady Maud's sweet voice as she spoke.
Perhaps it came a little in spite of herself, and she would certainly
have controlled her tone if she had thought of Leven just then. But
she was a very natural creature, after all, and she could not and
would not pretend to be sorry that he was dead, though the manner of
his end had seemed horrible to her when she had been able to think
over the news, after Van Torp had got safely away. So far there had
only been three big things in her life: her love for a man who was
dead, her tremendous determination to do some real good for his
memory's sake, and her deep gratitude to Van Torp, who had made that
good possible, and who, strangely enough, seemed to her the only
living person who really understood her and liked her for her own
sake, without the least idea of making love. And she saw in him what
few suspected, except little Ida and Miss More--the real humanity and
faithful kindness that dwelt in the terribly hard and coarse-grained
fighting financier. Lady Maud had her faults, no doubt, but she was
too big, morally, to be disturbed by what seemed to Margaret Donne an
intolerable vulgarity of manner and speech.

As for Margaret, she now felt that painful little remorse that hurts
us when we realise that we have suspected an innocent person of
something dreadful, even though we may have contributed to the
ultimate triumph of the truth. Van Torp unconsciously deposited a coal
of fire on her head.

'I'd just like to say how much I appreciate your kindness in singing
last night, Madame da Cordova,' he said. 'From what you knew and
told me on the steamer, you might have had a reasonable doubt, and I
couldn't very well explain it away before. I wish you'd some day tell
me what I can do for you. I'm grateful, honestly.'

Margaret saw that he was much in earnest, and as she felt that she had
done him great injustice, she held out her hand with a frank smile.

'I'm glad I was able to be of use,' she said. 'Come and see me in
town.'

'Really? You won't throw me out if I do?'

Margaret laughed.

'No, I won't throw you out!'

'Then I'll come some day. Thank you.'

Van Torp had long given up all hope that she would ever marry him, but
it was something to be on good terms with her again, and for the sake
of that alone he would have risked a good deal.

The four paired off, and Lady Maud walked in front with Van Torp,
while Margaret and Logotheti followed more slowly; so the couples did
not long keep near one another, and in less than five minutes they
lost each other altogether among the trees.

Margaret had noticed something very unusual in the Greek's appearance
when they had met half an hour earlier, and she had been amazed when
she realised that he wore no jewellery, no ruby, no emeralds, no
diamonds, no elaborate chain, and that his tie was neither green,
yellow, sky-blue, nor scarlet, but of a soft dove grey which she liked
very much. The change was so surprising that she had been on the point
of asking him whether anything dreadful had happened; but just then
Lady Maud had come up with them.

They walked a little way now, and when the others were out of sight
Margaret sat down on one of the many boulders that strewed the park.
Her companion stood before her, and while he lit a cigarette she
surveyed him deliberately from head to foot. Her fresh lips twitched
as they did when she was near laughing, and she looked up and met his
eyes.

'What in the world has happened to you since yesterday?' she asked in
a tone of lazy amusement. 'You look almost like a human being!'

'Do I?' he asked, between two small puffs of smoke, and he laughed a
little.

'Yes. Are you in mourning for your lost illusions?'

'No. I'm trying "to create and foster agreeable illusions" in you.
That's the object of all art, you know.'

'Oh! It's for me, then? Really?'

'Yes. Everything is. I thought I had explained that the other night!'
His tone was perfectly unconcerned, and he smiled carelessly as he
spoke.

'I wonder what would happen if I took you at your word,' said
Margaret, more thoughtfully than she had spoken yet.

'I don't know. You might not regret it. You might even be happy!'

There was a little silence, and Margaret looked down.

'I'm not exactly miserable as it is,' she said at last. 'Are you?'

'Oh no!' answered Logotheti. 'I should bore you if I were!'

'Awfully!' She laughed rather abruptly. 'Should you want me to leave
the stage?' she asked after a moment.

'You forget that I like the Cordova just as much as I like Margaret
Donne.'

'Are you quite sure?'

'Absolutely!'

'Let's try it!'