Her Majesty's Minister Part 37

Heedless as to where I went, so deeply engaged was I in conflicting feelings and in trying to determine whether I should keep that appointment on the footpath to Moret, at last I found myself in Samoreau, where, crossing by the ferry, I returned to the forest, and at eight o'clock was back again, idling with several of the guests on the lawn in front of the chateau.

After drinking my coffee, I sat in the window of one of the pet.i.t salons that overlooked the valley and took up a pen, meaning to write to my hostess, for I had resolved to send her a note of regret, and return at once to Paris. I could remain there no longer.

Scarcely had I taken the note-paper from the escritoire, when the Baroness de Chalencon entered, fussy as usual and full of the excursion to Barbison.

"Leonie tells me you are not accompanying us," she cried in French.

"I've been searching for you everywhere. Why, my dear Gerald, you must come."

"I regret, Baronne, that I can't," I answered. "I have to go to Paris by the midday train."

"How horribly unsociable you are!" she exclaimed. "Surely you can postpone your journey to Paris! Wolkenstein and the others have declared that we can't do without you."

"Express to them my regrets," I said. "But to-day it is utterly impossible. I must be at the Emba.s.sy this afternoon. I have important business there."

"Well, I suppose if you failed to put in an appearance, a crisis in Europe would not result, would it?" she observed with a touch of grim irony. "At the Rue de Lille or the Rue de Varenne," she added, meaning the German and Austrian Emba.s.sies, "they take things far more easily than you do. That's the worst of you English--you are always so very enthusiastic and so painfully businesslike."

"I am compelled to do my duty," I answered briefly.

"Most certainly," answered the Baroness. "But you might surely be sociable as well! This is not like you, M'sieur Ingram."

"I must apologise, Baronne," I said. "But, believe me, it is impossible for me to go to Barbison to-day. I have urgent correspondence here to attend to, and afterwards I must run up to Paris."

When she saw that I was firm, she reluctantly left me, saying as she disappeared through the door:

"I really don't know what is coming to you. You are not at all the light and soul of the summer picnics, as you once used to be."

"I'm growing old," I shouted with a laugh.

She halted, turned back, and, putting her head inside the room again, retorted in a low, distinct voice:

"Or have fallen in love--which is it?"

I treated her suggestion with ridicule, and in the end she retired, laughing merrily, for at heart she was a pleasant woman, with whom I was always on excellent terms of friendship.

Then I sat down again to write, hoping to remain undisturbed. But although I held the pen poised in my hand I could think of no excuse.

Three carriages drew up before the chateau, the coachmen wearing those handsome scarlet vests, conical hats, and many gold b.u.t.tons, which together represent the mode in Fontainebleau and at Monte Carlo; and the guests, a merry, laughing, chattering crowd, mounted into the vehicles.

Big picnic baskets, with the gilt tops of champagne bottles peeping out, were placed in a light cart to follow the excursionists, and two of the guests--men from Vienna--mounted the horses held by the grooms. Then, when all was ready, the whips cracked, there was a loud shouting of farewells to the hostess, who stood directing her servants, and the whole party moved off and away to the leafy forest lying below.

I looked down from the window, and saw the Princess standing on the drive--a sweet, girlish figure in her white dress, her slim waist girdled with blue, and her fair hair bound tightly beneath her sailor-hat. She scarcely looked more than nineteen as she stood there in the morning sunlight, smiling and waving her little hand to her departing guests.

She glanced up suddenly, and I drew back from the window to escape observation. So gentle so tender, so fair was she. And yet I feared her--just as I feared myself.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

A WOMAN'S HEART.

Reader, I do not know what influence it was that overcame me in that breathless hour of perplexity and indecision: whether it was the fascination of her beauty; whether it was owing to the fact that I unconsciously entertained some affection for her; or whether it was because my sense of duty to my country urged me to endeavour to learn the secret of the conspiracy formed against her by the Powers of Europe.

To-day, as I sit here writing down this strange chapter of secret diplomacy, I cannot decide which of these three influences caused me to throw my instinctive caution to the winds and keep the appointment in the leafy forest glade that led through the beeches to Veneux Nadon and on to quiet old Moret.

Instinctively I felt myself in danger--that if I allowed myself to become fascinated by this capricious, impulsive woman, it would mean ruin to us both. Yet her beauty was renowned through Europe, and the ill.u.s.trated papers seemed to vie with each other in publishing her new portraits. Her confession to me had been sufficient to turn the head of any man. Nevertheless, with a fixed determination not to allow myself to fall beneath the fascination of those wonderful eyes, I strolled down the forest-path and awaited her coming.

Soon she approached, walking over the mossy ground noiselessly, save for the quick swish of her skirts; and then with a glad cry of welcome, she grasped my hand.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, a slight flush mounting to her delicate, well-moulded cheeks, "you received my note last night, Gerald? Can you forgive me? I am a woman, and should not have written so."

"Forgive!" I repeated. "Of course I forgive you anything, Leonie."

"You think none the worse of me for it?" she urged, speaking rapidly in French. "Indeed, I allowed my pen to run away, and now I regret it."

I breathed more freely. Her att.i.tude was that of a woman who, conscious of error, now wished it to be forgotten.

"To regret is quite unnecessary," I a.s.sured her in a low voice of sympathy. "We are all of us human, and sometimes we err."

Silence fell between us for a few moments. It struck me that she was striving strenuously to preserve her self-restraint.

"You will destroy that letter, promise me," she urged, looking piercingly into my face. "It was foolish--very foolish--of me to write it."

"I have done so," I answered, although, truth to tell, it still remained in my pocket.

"And you will not despise me because in an hour of foolishness I confessed my love for you?"

"I shall never despise you, Leonie," I answered. "We have always been good friends, but never lovers. The latter we never shall be."

She looked at me quickly, with a strange expression.

"Never?" she asked, in a tone so low that I could scarcely catch the word.

"Never," I responded.

Her laces stirred as her breast rose and fell, and I saw that she herself was endeavouring to evade my query, although at the same time her heart was full of the same impetuous pa.s.sion which had so much amazed me on the previous night. I had spoken plainly, and my single word, uttered firmly, had crushed her.

It occurred to me that I had made a mistake. I had not acted diplomatically. I knew, alas! that I was, and always had been, a terrible blunderer in regard to women's affections. Some men are unlucky in their love-affairs. I was one of them.

We walked slowly together side by side for some distance, neither uttering a word. At last I halted again, and, taking her hand, bent earnestly to her, saying:

"Now, Leonie, let us put aside any sentimentality and talk reasonably."

"Ah!" she said, her eyes flashing quickly, "you do not love me. Put aside sentiment indeed! How can I put it aside?"

"But a moment ago you suggested that we should forget what pa.s.sed between us yesterday."

"I did so in order to test you--to see whether you had a spark of affection for me in your heart. But the bare, cold truth is now exposed. You have not!"

Her face was ashen, and her magnificent eyes had a strange look in them.

"Could you respect me and count me your friend, Leonie, if I feigned an affection which did not really exist within me?" I asked. "Reason with yourself for a moment. Had I been unscrupulous towards you I might yesterday have told you that I reciprocated your affection, and--"

"And you do not?" she cried. "Tell me the truth plainly, once and for all."