The Mischief-Maker Part 52

"To-morrow night, at any rate," he said, "there will be no article. We have made sure of that. I pray to Heaven that it may not be too late!"

She shuddered. The service of dinner was resumed.

"Put the paper away," she begged. "Don't let us think of it any more.

After all, as you say, he was warned. Nothing that one feels now can do any good. Give me some wine. Talk to me of other things."

Estermen came in to them presently. Herr Freudenberg insisted upon his taking a chair. Once more he dismissed the waiters.

"All goes well," Estermen announced. "There is not an idea at headquarters as to the source of the explosion. I have been round with the newspaper men."

"How is Kendricks?" Herr Freudenberg asked.

"Alive, but barely conscious."

"It is a pity," Herr Freudenberg said coldly. "Kendricks is responsible for a good deal of the trouble. Did you see that to-night's article is here?"

Estermen nodded.

"He must have been a day ahead," he explained. "It was probably a later one of the series upon which he was engaged when the thing occurred."

"This one will do sufficient harm," Herr Freudenberg remarked grimly.

Estermen shrugged his shoulders.

"It is true, and yet we have a great start. Public opinion is thoroughly unsettled. Even those who accepted the _entente_ as the most brilliant piece of diplomacy of the generation, are beginning to wonder what really has been gained by it. If I were at Berlin,"

Estermen continued, with a covert glance up at his master, "now is the time I should choose. To-morrow _Le Grand Journal_ will be silent.

To-morrow I should send a polite notification to the English Government that owing to the unsettled condition of the country, and the nervousness of certain German residents, His Imperial Majesty has thought it wise to send a warship to Agdar."

"The German subjects are a trifle hypothetical," Herr Freudenberg muttered. "We had the utmost difficulty in persuading an ex-convict to go out there."

"What does it matter?" Estermen asked. "He is there. He represents the glorious liberties of the Fatherland. Millions have been spent before now for the blood of one man."

Marguerite sighed. She was leaning back in her place, watching the boughs of the lime trees swinging gently back and forth in the night breeze, the cool moonlight outside, refreshing in its contrast to the over-lit and overheated auditorium of the music-hall. On the stage a Revue was in full swing. Mademoiselle Ixe glanced at it but seldom. Her eyes seemed to be always outside.

"Tell me," she demanded almost pa.s.sionately, "why cannot one leave the world alone? It is great enough and beautiful enough. Will Germany be really the happier, do you think, if she triumphs against England? It doesn't seem worth while. Life is so short, the joy of living is so hard to grasp. Don't you think," she added, leaning towards her companion, her beautiful eyes full of entreaty, "that for one night at least, all thoughts of your country and of her destinies might pa.s.s away? Let us live in the world that amuses itself, that takes the pleasures that grow ready to its hand, whose arms are not rapacious, and whose sword lies idle. Forget for a little time, dear friend. Let us both forget!"

Herr Freudenberg smiled as he finished his wine.

"Ah! dear Marguerite," he said, "you preach the great philosophy. We will try humbly to follow in your footsteps. Lead on and we will follow--up to the Montmartre, if you will, or down to the Rue Royale.

What does it matter, sweetheart, so long as we are together?"

She shivered a little as his fingers touched hers, although her eyes still besought him. The _vestiaire_ was standing by with her lace coat. She rose slowly to her feet.

"To the Rue Royale," she decided. "To-night I have no fancy for the Montmartre."

CHAPTER XII

DISTRESSING NEWS

Mrs. Carraby advanced into the library of the great house in Grosvenor Square. Her husband had risen from his desk and was standing with his hands in his pockets upon the hearth-rug. His dress was as neat and correct as ever, his hair as accurately parted, his small moustache as effectually twirled. Yet there was a frown upon his face, an expression of gloomy peevishness about his expression. His wife stood and looked at him, looked at him and thought.

"You are back early," he said. "What is the matter? You don't look radiantly happy. I thought you were looking forward so much to this bazaar."

"I was," she replied. "I am disappointed."

He saw then that her silence was not a matter of indifference but of anger.

"What's wrong?" he asked quickly.

Her lips parted for a moment. One saw that her teeth were firmly clenched. There was a wicked light in her strange-colored eyes.

"It was that woman again," she muttered,--"the d.u.c.h.ess!"

"What about her?" Carraby demanded. "She's bound to be civil to you now, anyway."

"Is she?" Mrs. Carraby replied. "Is she, indeed! Well, her civility this afternoon has been such that I shall have to give up my stall. I can't stay there."

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"Nothing except that before everybody she once more cut me dead, cut me wickedly," Mrs. Carraby declared. "You don't understand the tragedy of this to a woman. You are not likely to. She did it in such a way this time that there isn't a person worth knowing in London who isn't laughing about it at the present moment."

"Beast of a woman!" he muttered.

Mrs. Carraby came a little further into the room. She sank into an easy-chair and sat there. Her hands were tightly clenched, her face was hard and cold, her tone icy. Yet one felt that underneath a tempest was raging.

"You know, Algernon," she went on, "we had some hard times when you first began to make your way a little. When we first took this house, even, things weren't altogether easy. Americans can come from nowhere, do the most outrageous things in the world, and take London by storm.

London, on the other hand, is cruel to English people who have only their money. She was cruel to us, Algernon, but with all the snubs and all the difficulties I ever had, nothing has ever happened to me like to-day."

"You'll get over it."

"Get over it!" she repeated. "Yes, but I thought that that sort of thing was at an end. I thought that when you were a Cabinet Minister no one would dare to treat me as though I were a social n.o.body."

"You must remember that the d.u.c.h.ess has a special reason," he reminded her. "I suppose it's that Portel affair."

"Yes," Mrs. Carraby agreed, "it is the Portel affair."

They were both silent. There wasn't much to be said, for the moment.

"Have you heard," he inquired presently, "whether Lady Anne is with him in Paris?"

"No," she replied. "Somehow or other, people don't seem to talk scandal about Lady Anne. They say that she is staying for a time with an old friend there. Algernon!"

"Yes?"