The Mischief-Maker Part 56

"I have had the most extraordinary luck," he remarked. "No other man, naturally, knew so much of Anglo-German and Anglo-French relations. And instead of being at home in Downing Street, and muzzled, I happened to be here on the spot, to run up against Falkenberg, discover his little schemes, and with my own special knowledge to see through them at once.

No one else ever had such an opportunity."

Madame Christophor smiled enigmatically. She was looking thoughtfully across at her guest.

"It is not every opportunity in life," she murmured, "which a man knows how to embrace!"

CHAPTER XV

NEARING A CRISIS

That night, for the first time since his arrival in the house as a guest, Julien dined downstairs. To his surprise, when he presented himself in the smaller salon to which he had been directed, he found the table laid for two only. Madame Christophor, who was standing on the threshold of the winter-garden opening out from the apartment, read his expression and frowned.

"You expected Lady Anne to dine?" she asked bluntly.

Julien was taken a little aback.

"It seemed natural to expect her," he admitted.

Madame Christophor moved towards the bell, but Julien intercepted her.

He remembered all that he owed to this woman. He was ashamed of his lack of tact.

"Dear Madame Christophor," he pleaded, "forgive me if for a moment I forgot how altered things are. Indeed, it was not a matter of choice with me. Of course, it will give me the greatest pleasure to dine tete-a-tete with you!"

He was, perhaps, a shade too impressive, but Madame Christophor, as all women who greatly desire to read in a man's words what they choose to find there, hesitated. Finally, with a shrug of the shoulders, she turned away from the bell.

"Three is such an impossible number," she declared, with well-a.s.sumed carelessness. "Lady Anne has her own salon adjoining her apartment. She dines there always. If I am without company, I enjoy the rest of being alone. She is very delightful in her own way, your dear Lady Anne, but she and I have not much in common. Come and see my roses."

She led the way into the conservatory, a dome-shaped building with colored gla.s.s at the top, fragrant, almost faint with the perfume of roses and drooping exotics. A little fountain was playing in the middle. When the butler announced the service of dinner and they returned to take their places, she left the door open.

"Tonight," she announced, as they sat side by side at the small round table, "I am going to take advantage of the situation. I am your hostess and you are an invalid. It is my opportunity to talk. Are you a good listener, Sir Julien?"

She had dropped her voice almost to a whisper. Those beautiful deep-set eyes were challenging his. She seemed to have made up her mind that for that night, at any rate, her beauty should be unquestioned. She wore a dress of black net, fitting very closely, a wonderful background for her white skin and the ropes of pearls which were twined about her neck. He had never seen her _decolletee_, but he remembered reading in a ladies' fashion paper that a famous sculptor had once declared her neck and bust to be the most beautiful in Paris. She had even added the slightest touch of color to her cheeks. There was no longer any sign of the wrinkles at the sides of her eyes. She read the half ingenuous, half unwilling admiration in his face, and she laughed at him.

"Ah, my friend," she murmured, "I can see that you object to the role of listener! Very well, then, you shall talk. You shall tell me of your life in England. You shall tell me what dreams have come to you for the days when once more you shall help to shape the destinies of your nation. Tell me how you mean to live! Shall you be again--what was it Lady Anne thought you?--a prig?"

"I am like many other and more famous men," he remarked. "I have learned much in adversity."

"I read the English papers," she continued presently. "I have also a large correspondence. Do you know that there is nearly a rebellion in your party? Questions have been asked about you in the House. Both sides want you back. There is a feeling that you were allowed to go much too easily, that the indiscretion of which you were guilty was a trifle. This man Carraby is what you call--a cad! That does not do in the high places. Nationality cannot conceal a lack of breeding."

"I have thought over many things," Julien admitted. "If the way is made clear for me, I shall go back. Why not? I believe that I can serve my country, and it is the life for which I am best fitted. Carraby may have his good points, but his ambitions have been a little too extensive. He would have made a better mayor of the town where he was born."

"You are right," she declared. "There is no place for such men in the great world. You will go back. It is written. See--I drink to England's future Prime Minister!"

She raised her gla.s.s, which the butler had just filled with champagne.

She looked into his eyes as she drank and Julien was conscious of a pa.s.sing uneasiness. She set the gla.s.s down, empty. Her hand lay for a moment near his.

"You will go back," she murmured. "You will forget. The people whom you have met in your brief period of adversity will seem to you like shadows. Is it not so?"

He took her hand and raised it boldly to his lips.

"It will never be like that with you, dear hostess," he a.s.sured her.

"There are things which one does not forget."

She did not withdraw her hand. Its pressure upon his fingers was faint but insistent.

"Do you remember when we first met," she said softly, "how bitter we were against the others--even at first against one another? You had been betrayed by that unimportant woman and the whole s.e.x was hateful to you. I had just come from seeing the tragedy caused by a man's cra.s.s selfishness. I, too, was wearing the fetters. To me the whole of your s.e.x seemed abominable.... You see," she went on, "my marriage was a terrible disappointment. I fancied that I was marrying a great man, a genius, an inspired statesman, and I found myself allied to a political machine. My wealth--have I told you, I wonder, that I am very wealthy?--helped him. For the rest, I was a puppet by his side. I lived in Berlin for one year. Official life in Berlin for an American woman, even though she be Princess von Falkenberg, is still intolerable. The men were bad enough, the women worse. I could not breathe. I was no part of my husband's life. I was no part of any one's life. The German women did not understand me. My husband--oh, he is very German in his heart!--only laughed at my complaints. He would have been perfectly willing to see me become as those others--_hausfrauen_, bearers of children, a domestic article. So we separated--divorce at that moment was impossible. I came back to Paris."

"You had no children?" Julien asked.

"One boy," she answered, her eyes becoming very soft. "Do not let us speak of him for a moment."

The service of dinner continued. Outside, the water from the fountain fell into the basin with a gentle, monotonous sound. The perfume of the roses stole through the open doorway. One softly-shaded lamp had been lit, but the rest of the lofty room remained in shadowy obscurity. The light from that one lamp seemed to fall full upon Madame Christophor's beautiful face.

"I loved my boy," she went on. "It was part of my husband's cruelty to detach him from me. He has the law on his side. I may not even see Rudolf. Very well, I do my best to steel my heart. I come here to live.

I have many friends, but Falkenberg is the only man to whom I have ever belonged, and he has treated me as he would have treated one of those others--his companions for the moment. I have occupied myself here in work of different sorts. I have tried in my way to do good among women less happy, even, than I. Wherever I went I saw that every woman who has sinned, every woman who is miserable, every woman who has become a blot upon the earth, is what she is by reason of man's selfishness.

Can you wonder that I have grown a little bitter?"

"I wonder at nothing in the woman who has been Falkenberg's wife,"

Julien replied. "He seems to me the most unscrupulous person who ever breathed. Yet in his way he is marvelously attractive."

"He is," she admitted. "I fell in love with him against my will.

Directly my reason intervened, the madness was over. How old do you think I am, Sir Julien?"

Julien was a little startled.

"How old?" he repeated.

"A foolish question, of course," she continued. "How could you be honest! I am twenty-nine years old. I believe that I am the richest woman in Paris. I am tired of being called brilliant and cynical, of showing fortune-hunters to the door, of living my life in loneliness.

Falkenberg has sworn that if I take any steps to make a divorce possible, I shall never see my boy again. I have not seen him, as it is, for nearly two years. The threat is losing its terrors.... You are listening, my friend?"

"Of course!"

She turned to the butler. The other servants had already left the room.

"Bring coffee into the winter-garden," she ordered. "Come, Sir Julien."

She lit a cigarette and threw it away almost immediately. Her eyes were gleaming like stars. She laid her fingers upon his arm as they pa.s.sed out into the perfumed air of the conservatory, and he seemed to feel some touch of the fire that was burning in her veins. She swayed a little towards him. The color in her cheeks was brilliant. Her bosom was rising and falling quickly. She was splendidly handsome, nerved up to great things, a woman inspired by a purpose. Julien was afraid. He, too, felt something of the excitement of the moment, but his brain seemed numbed. There was nothing he could say. She threw herself back into a low chair and drew him down to her side. With her other hand she caught hold of a cl.u.s.ter of pink roses and pressed their cool blossoms to her cheek.

"Sir Julien," she murmured, "I have looked so steadfastly into life, I have striven so hard to find a place there. I have something to give. I do not come empty-handed. I can place offerings upon the altar of the great G.o.d. I have myself, my brains such as they are, and the golden key which unlocks the wonderful doors. Can you wonder that I ask for something in return? I have stood in the marketplace of life, I have pa.s.sed down between the stalls, and I am humiliated. There is no life, there is no career upon this world for a woman. It is a strange doctrine, perhaps, to preach in these days, but I have searched and I know it to be the truth. Nature meant woman for man, and if she rebels there is no seat for her alone among the mighty places. Alone I can win none of the things I desire. You see, I talk to you like this, nakedly, because we are of the order of those who understand. You very nearly married a duke's daughter and became a middle-cla.s.s politician. Don't do it. Don't think of it any more, Julien. You were meant for the great places, and I think--I think--that I was meant to hold the torch to light you there!"

"Madame Christophor!"

She started at his tone. In the splendid arrogance of her a.s.sured position, her brilliant gifts, her almost inspired individuality, failure had never occurred to her. Even now she refused to read the message in his set face.