The Mischief-Maker Part 20

"Presently the orchestra shall play the music of Faust. You will sing to us? Tonight is one of my nights, never really perfect unless some minutes of it move to the music of your voice."

She laughed softly.

"Yes, monsieur, I will sing," she answered, "but not the Jewel Song tonight. Send the _chef d'orchestre_ to me."

At the merest signal he was there with his violin under his arm.

Mademoiselle whispered a word in his ear and he departed, all smiles.

The selection which they were playing suddenly ceased. _Monsieur le chef_ alone played some Italian air, which no one wholly recognized but every one found familiar. Slowly he walked around the tables, playing still, always with his eyes upon Mademoiselle Ixe, and when at last he stood before her, she threw her head back and sang.

The clatter of crockery diminished, the waiters paused in their tasks or crept on tiptoe about the place. Men and women stood up at their tables that they might see the singer better; conversation ceased. And all the time the _chef d'orchestre_ drew music from his violin, and mademoiselle, with half-closed eyes, her head thrown back, filled the whole room with melody. Even she herself knew that she was singing as she never sang at the Opera, as she had never sung when a great impressario had come to try her voice, as one sings only when the heart is shaking a little, and as she finished, the fingers of her left hand slowly crept across the table into the hand of Herr Freudenberg, the toymaker, and her last notes were sung almost in a whisper into his ears. The room rose up to applaud. The _chef d'orchestre_ went back to his place, bowing right and left. Herr Freudenberg raised the fingers that lay between his hand to his lips.

"Ah, mademoiselle," he murmured, "I have no longer words!"

Albert came back. Scarcely more than a look pa.s.sed between him and Herr Freudenberg. Then the latter rose to his feet.

"Come," he said, "a little surprise for you. You, too, dear Julien. I insist. This way."

They pa.s.sed from the room. As mademoiselle rose to her feet, people began once more to applaud.

"Mademoiselle will sing again presently, perhaps," Herr Freudenberg answered a man who leaned forward. "We do not depart."

He led the way to the head of the staircase and they pa.s.sed into the back regions of the place--dim, ill-lit, mysterious. Albert, who had preceded them, threw open the door of a room. There was a small supper table laid for three, more flowers, more wine.

"It is that one may talk for five minutes," Herr Freudenberg explained.

"Mademoiselle!"

But mademoiselle had already flitted away. The door somehow was closed, the two men were alone.

CHAPTER XIII

POLITICS AND PATRIOTISM

Herr Freudenberg shrugged his shoulders and glanced at the softly-closed door.

"Mademoiselle is a paragon," he declared. "Always she understands. Sir Julien, will you not sit down for a moment? Let me confess that this little supper-party is a pretense. For five minutes I wish to talk to you."

Julien seated himself without hesitation.

"My dear host," he said, "I left Berlin a year ago with only one hope--or rather two. The first was that I might never have to visit Berlin again! The second was that I might have the pleasure of meeting you as speedily and as often as possible."

Herr Freudenberg smiled--a quiet, reminiscent smile.

"Even now," he remarked, "when I would speak to you for a moment on more serious subjects, the strange humor of that round-table conference comes home to me. There were you and I and our big friend from Austria, and that awful dull man from here, and the Russian. Shall you ever forget that speechless Russian, who never opened his lips except to disagree? Sometimes I caught your eye across the table. And, Sir Julien, you know, I presume, whose was the triumph of those days?"

Julien smiled doubtfully.

"Yours, of course," Herr Freudenberg continued. "The Press even ventured to find fault with me. England, as usual, they declared, had gained all she desired and had given the very minimum. However, we will not waste time in reminiscences. To-day the only pleasure I have in thinking of that conference is the fact that you and I came together.

When you left Berlin--I saw you off, you remember--I told those who stood around that there went the future Prime Minister of England. I believed it, and I am seldom mistaken. Tell me, what piece of transcendental ill-fortune is this which brings you here an exile?"

"I committed an act of transcendental folly," Julien replied. "I have no one to blame but myself. I not only wrote an indiscreet letter, but I put my name to it. I was deceived, too, in the character of the woman to whom it was sent."

"It is so trifling an error," Herr Freudenberg said thoughtfully, "made by many a man without evil results. One learns experience as one pa.s.ses on in life. It is a hard price that you are paying for yours. Come, that is finished. Now answer me. What are you going to do?"

Julien laughed, a little bitterly.

"My friend," he answered, stretching out his hand and taking a cigarette from the open box upon the table, "you ask rather a hard question. My resignation was accepted, was even required of me.

Politics and diplomacy are alike barred to me. There is no return. What is there left? I may write a book. So far as my means permit, I may travel. I may play games, take a walk in the morning, play bridge in the afternoon, eat heavily and sleep early. What is there left, Herr Freudenberg--tell me of your wisdom--for a man about whose ears has come crashing the scaffolding of his life?"

Herr Freudenberg looked across at his companion, and in that dimly-lit room his eyes were bright and his lips firm.

"To rebuild, my friend," he declared. "Choose another foundation and rebuild."

"You recognize, I presume," Julien said, "that I require a few more details if your advice is to be of value?"

"The details are here in this room," Herr Freudenberg replied firmly.

"Be my man. I cannot offer you fame, because fame comes only, nowadays, to the man who serves his own country. You see, I make no pretense at deceiving you, but I offer you a life of action, I offer you such wealth as your imagination can have conceived, and I offer you revenge."

"Revenge," Julien repeated, a little vaguely.

"Upon the political party by whose scheming that letter was first of all elicited from you and then made public," Herr Freudenberg said slowly. "Do you imagine that it was a thoughtless act of that woman's?

Do you know that her reward is to be a peerage for her husband?"

"You, too, believe that it was a trap, then?" Julien remarked.

"Of course. Don't you know yourself that you were a thorn in the flesh to your own party? They hated you because you were not afraid to preach war when war might have saved your country from what is to come. They hated you because you were a strong man in a strong place, and because the people believed in you. They hated you because the policy which would have been yours in the four or five years to come, would have been the policy which would have brought the country around you, which alone would have kept your party in power. You were the only figure in politics which the imperialist party in England had to fear. Mrs.

Carraby--I believe that was the lady's name--is ill-paid enough with that peerage. Leave out the personal element--or leave it in, if you will, for when I speak of my country I know no friendships--but, my dear friend, let me tell you that I myself would have given more than a peerage--I would have given a princ.i.p.ality--to the person who threw you out of English politics."

Julien's eyes were bright. Somehow or other, his old dreams, his old faith in himself had returned for a moment. And then the bitterness all swept in upon him.

"I think, Herr Freudenberg," he said, "that you are talking a little in the skies. At any rate, it makes no difference. Those things have pa.s.sed."

"Those things have pa.s.sed," Herr Freudenberg a.s.sented. "There is no future for you in England. That is why I wish to rescue you from the ignominy of which you yourself have spoken. I repeat my offer. Be my man. You shall taste life and taste it in such gulps as you wish."

Julien shook his head slowly.

"My friend," he said, "it is the cruel part of our profession that one man's life can be given to one country alone."

"Wrong!" Herr Freudenberg declared briskly. "I am not going to decry patriotism. The welfare of my country is the religion which guides my life. But you--you have no country. There is no England left for you.

She has thrown you out. You are a wanderer, a man without ties or home.

That is why I claim you as my man. I want to show you the way to revenge."

"You puzzle me," Julien admitted. "You talk about revenge. I know you far too well to believe that you would propose to me any scheme which would involve the raising even of my little finger against the country which has turned me out."