A Modern Mercenary Part 20

'How like a woman you put me off! I did not discuss you with Rallywood, of course, as you very well know. I asked him the single question as to what had actually been said. I knew he would not lie to me.'

'The Guard keep their falsehoods for outsiders, I suppose?'

Unziar liked this harping upon Rallywood less and less. He moved irritably.

'But that is not all. You have admitted that you are going to marry Elmur. That also signifies--something.'

'Whatever it signifies, it does not signify that I am disloyal to Maasau.'

'You have seen for yourself that there is a change here at Sagan,'

argued Unziar. 'No German has ever been welcome here before. We can but guess at treason.'

'Hush! it cannot be that, since my father has knowledge of it.'

This was an entirely unexpected development of the difficulty. Unziar felt the check, and even in his turbulence he changed his venue.

'It may be so--let that rest; but nothing can alter me in the belief that Elmur is the natural enemy of the State. Valerie, he can give you many things that I cannot offer you. But my love--No, hear me for once.

You must hear me, Valerie! You know that I have loved you always, I don't remember when it began--I was a boy. But Elmur at the best must have loved others before you. Whereas I--I have thought of no one else all my life!'

'Why, I have heard differently, Anthony,' she interposed, with a smile that was a vain effort to temper the intensity of his mood.

He stamped with his spurred heel upon a fallen flower.

'I don't pretend to be a saint; I am what other men are. You see I do not deceive you even now. But give me the chance and I will prove to you that the Unziars can be faithful. Valerie, give me your love! For G.o.d's sake don't say you cannot! Give me your love!'

'Anthony!'

It almost shocked her to see Unziar--cold and cynical Unziar--pleading as a man pleads for escape from death, with a terrible self-abandonment.

'Wait! Tell me this. Did you choose von Elmur?'

'My--we--it has nothing to do with that kind of thing.'

'I thought not! Then you will sacrifice yourself for an idea? You shall not!'

'Anthony, you are very good to me--you have always been. I know that if I felt for you as you wish me to feel, then you could help me. But I don't! As long as I can remember you have been my playfellow, my brother; but not more--never this! Anthony, I love you, but not--but not--You have been so honest with me that whatever it costs I must be honest with you. I can never do as you wish!'

Unziar listened rather to some far-off tide of thought, as it seemed, than to her words--thoughts that flowed in upon him and quenched hope.

'You do not love me; Elmur is beside the mark--beside the question of love--altogether. Then, Valerie, whom do you love?'

She gave him a frightened glance, and drew in her breath as one who parries a blow.

'There is no one'; then, added more firmly, 'You are mistaken--there is no one.'

'If that be so,' responded the young man sullenly, 'then my chance is as good as another's. I shall not give up hope! Remember that. But I have thought that Rallywood----'

Valerie recalled the coldness of the averted grey eyes, and the memory stung her.

'He hates me,' she replied with a haughty smile, 'as I hate him!'

'Rallywood hates you?' he repeated in angry astonishment.

'Yes; but whatever he may feel for me I return in full!'

'Valerie, then you love no one? Say it again.'

The jingle of spur and scabbard came through the flower-hung s.p.a.ces, and Rallywood pa.s.sed within a few feet of them. He was whistling softly as he walked along with an easy swing of his strong shoulders.

'I love----' Valerie began, and stopped short, for Rallywood turned in his stride as if he felt their eyes upon him.

'His Highness has sent for you, Unziar,' he said.

CHAPTER XIII.

LOVE IN TWO SHADES.

All the next morning the snow fell persistently, and Sagan might have been, as far as appearances went, a castle built in the air. Above, below, around, the snow eddied like a fairy torrent, beating against the solid walls and curling in curious ringed swirls about its b.u.t.tresses as water beats about a rock in midstream.

But the dominant grey of the outside world cast no appreciable reflection on the spirits of Madame de Sagan's guests, with whom gaiety and wild devices for killing time were necessary and familiar things.

But to Valerie the same suggestion of fear and unrest that had oppressed her on the previous evening still held its silent sway over the place.

She stood at the broad window of the main staircase watching the swift atoms of snow drift past, each one by itself a mere melting point, but, in their millions, mighty. She shivered and looked round with an odd sense of apprehension, as if the vague blind storm outside had its counterpart in a vague blind danger within.

A tall man came leaping up the staircase. He stopped beside her. She looked up at him, her deep eyes were full of some disturbing thought.

'Captain Rallywood, will you tell Major Counsellor from me,' she began at once, in a low, hurried voice, 'that, in spite of what he has heard of me, he must still believe Maasau is the dearest thing on earth to me.

Tell him that, if needful, I am ready to prove it with my life! He may make quite sure I meant all I said to him yesterday.'

Rallywood stood silent. The pa.s.sion of her voice and speech echoed in her own ears and suddenly seemed all excessive and uncalled for; a blush--half anger, half shame--rushed over her face, bringing tears to her eyes. Why was it decreed that she should always, in some small foolish way, appear to disadvantage before this wretched Englishman.

'I will tell him,' said Rallywood at last, 'though I cannot understand.'

'No, you cannot understand! You are so cold, so self-centred that the feelings and tumults which trouble most of us appear as weaknesses to you. Since you cannot understand us, you should not judge us, we others, who, in our own spasmodic way, love our country as you serve yours--steadily and with a whole heart.'

Now, John Rallywood was perplexed. He longed to set himself right with her. Her very accusations, her readiness to find fault, which might have made matters clear to some men, only disheartened him with a renewed sense of her dislike.

'You hate my nation,' he said, after a pause of consideration, 'therefore you condemn me, not because of anything I have done, but on general grounds, putting the worst construction on--on everything. I wonder why you judge me so hardly?'

Valerie laughed, her red lip finely edged with scorn.

'On the contrary, you judge us! Who made you a judge over us? You regard us--you English--with that straight steady look. I suppose you feel what futile creatures we others are, with our shifting moods and pa.s.sions, our little furies and desperations! Do you remember the night you joined the Guard--the night in the Cloister of St. Anthony? How I trembled and feared for you, I'--she laughed again--'I even wanted to help you! How absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish--one of those unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt to indulge!'

'Stop!' Rallywood cut her short with a peremptory word, 'I will not allow you to say such things of yourself nor--of me!'