A Modern Mercenary Part 22

Rallywood found the young Countess crouching and shivering near a wood fire. She was magnificently dressed in rich tones of royal purple, that accentuated her delicate fairness and beauty, and a small diadem of amethysts shone in the pale gold of her hair.

She took no notice of his entrance, though she was acutely conscious that his eyes were on her. She was hungry of his gaze, and she believed in the power of her own loveliness.

'Jack,' she said at last, 'come here. I wonder now why I sent for you, but I am miserable.'

She looked up at him heavy-lidded.

There was concern in his voice as he answered her.

'If I told you all,' she went on, 'you would not believe me. I am now--to-night--in great danger.'

'In danger? Here? where you are surrounded by friends,' replied Rallywood, beginning to wish himself well out of it. Had there been no Valerie Selpdorf, or even had he not uttered those impulsive words which, to his mind, changed his position from the indefinite to the definite, the history of his life might have been turned into another channel that evening. As it was, though Valerie remained free as the wind, he felt himself to be in some vague manner bound to her.

'Nonsense! You know how useless all these friends would be if things went wrong with me. They flatter the Countess of Sagan, but not one of them would make the smallest sacrifice for Isolde, the woman. I do not know if you, even you, are my friend. We talked about it--long ago. But I have not put you to the test, and I--I often wonder if our friendship still remains alive.'

'I am as I always was,' he parried.

'I wonder if that is true?' She raised her drooping face again. 'I don't know how to believe you. Why will you keep up this pretence of--of reserve between us? You never tell me your troubles, and I suppose you have them, like the rest of us. We should be quite old friends now, and yet you are always so'--she hesitated for a word--'courteous. Are you ever angry, for example?'

'Very often.'

'But not with me, and I have given you cause many a time. If you would be angry with me even once, Jack, causelessly angry, then I should know I had a friend to whom I could go if I were in trouble--in such trouble as I am to-night!'

'If there is anything I can do for you----'

The quiet tone annoyed her. She rose quickly.

'If--if--if! Any man could help me who--cared.'

'I do care.'

'I wonder,' she said wistfully, 'how much you mean of what you say. I have no standard to judge you by, because you are not quite like other men. But I owe you my life, and I sometimes think it gives me a claim on you.'

'I can never pretend you owe me anything: you were quite safe; no accident could have happened. You are far too good a horsewoman, though you were nervous for the moment.' He spoke with a careless affectionateness, for the young Countess in her helpless beauty appealed to him.

'Look at me!' she said tragically. 'Do I seem hateful?'

'You are a young queen,' he paused, and added, 'a young queen--seen in a dream! You are too ethereal to be of common earth.'

'I am of common earth like any other woman,' she answered with a forlorn little smile; 'I can be afraid and--I can love!'

'Afraid? In your own Castle, among your own people?'

'Yes, Jack. Don't think I am silly! It is quite true. You say you have not changed, that you are still my friend. You are my only one then! I must look to you for protection; I have no one else in the whole world.'

She was very near him, her little cold hand had caught his in her vehemence; she looked apprehensively behind her, and then spoke low in his ear. 'I am afraid of my husband. He wishes to be rid of me--I have seen it in his eyes. Sagan will kill me! Do you remember the night of the ball, when I gave you the firefly? Have you kept it, I wonder? I said mine would be a short life. It is true. Sagan is tired of me, and I--Jack, I--loathe him!'

'But----' Rallywood began.

'You don't believe me? See this!' she pushed back a band of black velvet from her arm, and held it out to him. This touched him more than all; the slender blue-veined wrist with the marks of those cruel fingers clasped about it moved him far more than the temptations of her delicate beauty. With an almost involuntary desire to comfort her as one might comfort and please a child, he bent above her hand and kissed the bruises.

Isolde clung to him with a quick sob of relief.

'Promise me, Jack, that you will save me! When danger threatens me I will send for you. You will come? You promise?'

But Rallywood was not in the least in love with Madame de Sagan for all his pity. He was again master of himself, and an odd suspicion flashed across him.

'I feel certain you are mistaken,' he repeated; 'but you have another friend who can be of more service than I just now, Mademoiselle Selpdorf.'

The Countess sank back into her chair.

'What do you know of Valerie?' she asked coldly.

'Very little, but----'

'Thanks! I know her better than you do. I don't choose that she should amuse herself at my expense.

As it is, she has brought most of this trouble upon me.'

Rallywood may have been sagacious enough on some points, but on this particular one he was a fool. He was not at all aware that Madame de Sagan with her innocent eyes and small brain was sifting him.

'But she meant to defend you!' he exclaimed.

She laughed softly, and if a woman could have compa.s.sed the ruin of a man by means of love and temptation, Rallywood was lost from that hour, for the rivalry of Valerie Selpdorf added the one incentive of bitter resolve that drives such slight-brained jealous souls to the last limit of reckless endeavour.

'When I find myself in danger I will remind you of the firefly, and you will come then, Jack!' she said, 'you promise?'

'When you want me, I will come--as soon as I may.'

'But that is only half a promise.'

'Yes,' he replied, 'but you know the other half is pledged already.'

She sprang up with clenched hands.

'What? To Valerie? Already?'

'No, Madame, to the Duke.'

'Ah, the Duke is well served!' she said sadly as he bowed at the door, but she laughed to herself when it closed behind him, 'Yet you will come when I send for you, Jack!'

CHAPTER XV.

COLENDORP.

As the night deepened the wind again rose, its many voices howled about the Castle and compelled the ear to listen. It volleyed yelling through the ravines, it roared among the lean pine-trees like the surf on an open coast, it swept round the Castle walls in long-drawn infuriated screaming that seemed charged with echoes of wild pain and remoteness and fear. The narrow moon had long since sunk behind the rack of storm-driven clouds, and left the mountains steeped in a tumultuous milk-coloured darkness of snow and wind.