Roden's Corner Part 38

"As you see."

"And is the game worth the candle?"

He laid his hand tentatively on a chair, and looked towards her with an interrogative glance. He would not, it appeared, sit down without her permission. And, womanlike, she gave it, with a shrug of one shoulder.

A woman rarely refuses a challenge. "And is the game worth the candle?"

he repeated.

"One can only tell when it is played out," was the reply; and Herr von Holzen glanced quickly at the lady who made it.

He turned away and listened to the music. An occasional concert was the one diversion he allowed himself at this time from his most absorbing occupation of making a fortune. He had probably a real love of music, which is not by any means given to the good only, or the virtuous.

Indeed, it is the art most commonly allied to vice.

"By the way," said Von Holzen, after a pause, "that paper which it pleased madame's fantasy to possess at one time--is destroyed. Its teaching exists only in my unworthy brain."

He turned and looked at her with his slow smile, his measuring eyes.

"Ah!"

"Yes; so madame need give the question no more thought, and may turn her full attention to her new--fancy."

Mrs. Vansittart was studying her programme, and did not look up or display the slightest interest in what he was saying.

"Every event seems but to serve to strengthen our position," went on Von Holzen, still half listening to the music. "Even the untimely death of Lord Ferriby--which might at first have appeared a _contretemps_.

Cornish takes home the coffin by tonight's mail, I understand. Men may come, madame, and men may go--but we go on for ever. We are still prosperous--despite our friends. And Cornish is nonplussed. He does not know what to do next, and fate seems to be against him. He has no luck.

We are manufacturing--day and night."

"You are interested in Mr. Cornish," observed Mrs. Vansittart, coolly; and she saw a sudden gleam in Von Holzen's eyes.

After all, the man had a pa.s.sion over which his control was insecure--the last, the longest of the pa.s.sions--hatred. He shrugged his shoulders.

"He has forced himself upon our notice--unnecessarily as the result has proved--only to find out that there is no stopping us."

He could scarcely control his voice as he spoke of Cornish, and looked away as if fearing to show the expression of his eyes.

Mrs. Vansittart watched him with a cool little smile. Von Holzen had not come here to talk of Cornish. He had come on purpose to say something which he had not succeeded in saying yet, and she was not ignorant of this. She was going to make it as difficult as possible for him, so that when he at last said what he had come to say, she should know it, and perhaps divine his motives.

"Even now," he continued, "we have succeeded beyond our expectations.

We are rich men, so that madame--need delay no longer." He turned and looked her straight in the eyes.

"I?" she inquired, with raised eyebrows. "Need delay no longer--in what?"

"In consummating the happiness of my partner, Percy Roden," he was clever enough to say without being impertinent. "He--and his banking account--are really worth the attention of any lady."

Mrs. Vansittart laughed, and, before answering, acknowledged stiffly the stiff salutation of a pa.s.ser.

"Then it is suggested that I am waiting for Mr. Roden to be rich enough in order to marry him?"

"It is the talk of gossips and servants."

Mrs. Vansittart looked at him with an amused smile. Did he really know so little of the world as to take his information from gossips and servants?

"Ah," she said, and that was all. She rose and made a little signal with her parasol to her coachman, who was waiting in the shadow of the Kursaal. As she drove home, she wondered why Von Holzen was afraid that she should marry Percy Roden, who, as it happened, was coming to tea in Park Straat that evening. Mrs. Vansittart had not exactly invited him--not, at all events, that he was aware of. He was under the impression that he had himself proposed the visit.

She remembered that he was coming, but gave no further thought to him.

All her mind was, indeed, absorbed with thoughts of Von Holzen, whom she hated with the dull and deadly hatred of the helpless. The sight of him, the sound of his voice, stirred something within her that vibrated for hours, so that she could think of nothing else--could not even give her attention to the little incidents of daily life. She pretended to herself that she sought retribution--that she wished on principle to check a scoundrel in his successful career. The heart, however, knows no principles; for these are created by and belong to the mind. Which explains why many women seem to have no principles and many virtuous persons no heart.

Mrs. Vansittart went home to make a careful toilet pending the arrival of Percy Roden. She came down to the drawing-room, and stood idly at the window.

"The talk of gossips and servants," she repeated bitterly to herself.

One of Von Holzen's shafts had, at all events, gone home. And Percy Roden came into the room a few minutes afterwards. His manner had more a.s.surance than when he had first made Mrs. Vansittart's acquaintance.

He had, perhaps, a trifle less respect for the room and its occupant.

Mrs. Vansittart had allowed him to come nearer to her; and when a woman allows a man of whom she has a low opinion to come near to her, she trifles with her own self-respect, and does harm which, perhaps, may never be repaired.

"I was too busy to go to the concert this afternoon," he said, sitting down in his loose-limbed way.

His a.s.sumption that his absence had been noticed rather nettled his hearer.

"Ah! Were you not there?" she inquired.

He turned and looked at her with his curt laugh. "If I had been there you would have known it," he said.

It was just one of those remarks--delivered in the half-mocking voice a.s.sumed in self-protection--which Mrs. Vansittart had hitherto allowed to pa.s.s unchallenged. And now, quite suddenly, she resented the manner and the speech.

"Indeed," she said, with a subtle inflection of tone which should have warned him.

But he was engaged in drawing down his cuffs. Many young men would know more of the world if they had no cuffs or collars to distract them.

"Yes," answered Roden; "if I had gone to the concert it would not have been for the music."

Percy Roden's method of making love was essentially modern. He threw to Mrs. Vansittart certain sc.r.a.ps of patronage and admiration, which she could pick up seriously and keep if she cared to. But he was not going to risk a wound to his vanity by taking the initiative too earnestly.

Mrs. Vansittart, who was busy at the tea-table, set down a cup which she had in her hand and crossed the room towards him.

"What do you mean, Mr. Roden?" she asked slowly.

He looked up with wavering eyes, and visibly lost colour under her gaze.

"What do I mean?"

"Yes. What do you mean when you say that, if you had gone to the concert, it would not have been for the music; that if you had been there, I should have known of your presence, and a hundred other--impertinences?"

At first Roden thought that the way was being made easy for him as it is in books, as, indeed, it sometimes is in life, when it happens to be a way that is not worth the treading; but the last word stung him like a lash--as it was meant to sting. It was, perhaps, that one word that made him rise from his chair.

"If you meant to object to anything that I may say, you should have done so long ago," he said. "Who was the first to speak at the hotel when I came to The Hague? Which of us was it that kept the friendship up and cultivated it? I am not blind. I could hardly be anything else, if I had failed to see what you have meant all along."

"What have I meant all along?" she asked, with a strange little smile.

"Why, you have meant me to say such things as I have said, and perhaps more."

"More--what can you mean?"