Part 25

"Send that up at once and let them know we will stand no nonsense. Keep Müller and Stettig's back for the present. Understand?"

And the clerk nodded again, and whistled down a tube, and evoked from regions below a brass-buttoned, gilt-braided functionary, to whom he entrusted the missive indicated, which bore the monogram of the hotel-company, and indeed contained their bill.

It was handed to Madame by the brass-buttoned functionary just as she reached the ante-room of her second-floor suite of apartments. She took it from the salver, and said without looking at it:

"Presently!"

The functionary gave a peremptory verbal message. She repeated:

"Presently, sir, presently.... At this moment I am exceedingly fatigued!"

The brass-buttoned functionary begged to remind the gracious lady of similar excuses previously received by the management. At this she turned upon him the battery of her magnificent eyes. Always economical of her forces, she had removed her torn tulle veil during the cab-drive, and with a delicate powder-puff drawn from a jeweled case dependant from her golden _châtelaine_, removed from her lovely face all traces of emotion. Only a spiteful woman would have called her thirty-five.... And the functionary was a man, despite his brass buttons and gilt braiding. When she smiled, he caved in, bowed, and left her. But he did not forget to leave the bill.

She had it in her hand as she entered the drawing-room of the suite of apartments, one of those impossibly shaped, fantastically-uncomfortable salons, possessing a multiplicity of doors and windows, upholstered with rose-satin and crusted with ormolu, such as are only seen in foreign hotels and upon the stage. Despite the sultry heat of the July weather the windows were shut, their Venetian blinds lowered, and their thick lace curtains drawn over these. And in a rose-colored arm-chair with twisted golden legs and arms and an absurd back-ornament like an Apollonian lyre, huddled a dark, hawk-featured, powerfully built man of something less than forty, wrapped in a short, wide coat lined, cuffed, and collared with black Astrakhan; wearing a traveling-cap similarly lined, and presenting the appearance of one who suffers from a cold of the snuffly, catarrhal kind.

He sneezed as Madame surged across the threshold, and would have told her to shut the door, only that she divined his intention and forestalled him, throwing her parasol upon a sofa and sinking into a chair as ridiculous as his own. Yet when her wealth of pale-hued draperies poured over it, and the ripe outlines of her voluptuous form concealed its crudities of design and coloring, it could be forgiven for being in bad taste.

She looked in silence at the traveling-cap, not at its sulky wearer, until, conscious of her sustained regard, he raised his hand to his head. In haste then, as though she dreaded the shock of his purposeful abstention from the customary courtesy, she said:

"Do not take it off! Pray keep it on!"

"Thanks!" He uttered the word laconically, drooping his immense, black-lashed eyelids over his fierce and staring eyes. They, too, were black, with the white, hard glitter of polished jet; black also were the great curved eyebrows, the coarse and shining hair that fell to his shoulders, the parted mustache, and the wedge-shaped beard that depended from his boldly curved chin. Rippling in small, regular waves, suggestive of the labor of a primitive sculptor's chisel, the inky _chevelure_ of this man with the cold,--taken in conjunction with his large, aquiline nose, deep chest, fleshy torso, and thick muscular limbs, reproduced the type of an ancient Assyrian warrior, as represented in some carved and painted wall-frieze of Nineveh or Babylon, marching in a triumphant procession of Shalmaneser or Sennacherib. Even the conical head-dress was reproduced by the modern cap with ear-pieces, and turned-up border; and the deep yellowish-white of the alabaster in which the ancient sculptor wrought his bas-relief was reproduced in thick, smooth, unblemished skin.

Handsome as he undoubtedly was in his exotic, Oriental style, even in spite of influenza, Madame contemplated him with ill-concealed distaste. To a woman who loves, what matters the temporary thickening of the beloved object's profile, even when accompanied by attacks of sneezing and a running at the nose and eyes? She can wait the day when his voice will clear, and his leading feature will regain its former beauty. That is, as long as she continues to love.

The passion of this man and this woman had in its brief time burned high and fiercely. So does a fire of paper or straw. Now Passion lay dying, and Satiety and Weariness were the only watchers by the death-bed. Every twenty-four hours that passed over the heads of the couple brought nearer the hour when these would give place to Hatred and Dislike. And meanwhile both were infinitely hipped.

"Every window.... Every curtain.... Must we, then, asphyxiate?..." At the end of her patience, she made an angry gesture as though to loosen the ribbon of mauve velvet that held a diamond locket at the base of her round white throat, bit her full lip--and let her hand drop idly into her silken lap again.

Her companion stretched out a pair of muscular, but shortish legs, encased in dark green trousers with braided side-stripes, and looked with interest at his patent boots. Then he answered, speaking with a drawling, nasal accent:

"Unless M. de Bismarck has supplied you with the means of averting a singularly-unpleasant catastrophe, it may be that the answer to your question should be 'Yes'!"

She understood that he questioned, and said, drooping her proud, languorous eyes under the hard black stare of his:

"You would be wiser to speak in a lowered tone, when you refer to--that personage. One does not trifle with him--here or elsewhere!"

"The Pomeranian bear," said her companion, pouting a slightly swollen lip, and dabbing gingerly at his reddened nostrils with a voluminous cambric handkerchief exhaling the heavy perfume of opoponax, "has claws and fangs. Also a hug, in which friends of mine have stifled. But they were men and you are an enchanting woman!" He removed his cap and bowed; resuming: "Besides you went to M. le Ministre with a trump in your hand--a little Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud. Have you played her, may I ask?"

He got up, pocketing his handkerchief, came over to her and stood beside her, in the upright attitude which called attention to the disproportion between his huge torso and his too-short legs. He held his furred cap upon his hip with one hand, and with the other stroked his waved wedge-beard. The rasping sound made by his heavily-ringed fingers as they passed through the thick, crisp hairs irritated her to anguish. Yet not so long ago it had thrilled her to sensuous ecstasy.

"I played the girl--and I have lost!" Almost against her will a cry broke from her. "My God! what things he said to me! My God! what humiliations we women endure for men!"

"I had imagined, my Adelaide," said he of the Assyrian hair and profile, showing in a smile a double row of teeth so perfect that they struck the imagination as being carved out of two solid curves of ivory--"that you were playing for your own advantage--even when you played my game. Did M. le Comte mention me at any point of the interview?"

She started at the unexpected question. Her voice shook a little in the reply.

"He said that he had heard--that M. de Straz had lately visited Berlin. That his agents would tell him. Of course!"

"He said nothing of--a flying visit of mine to Sigmaringen?"

She answered hastily:

"I think not. No! I am quite certain he did not."

"No?"

Straz sniffed and whipped out his handkerchief, grumbling:

"Yet the purport of my mission to that South German crow's-nest was known to him--here in Berlin--I can prove it!--by nightfall of the day I interviewed the Prince." He added, trumpeting in his handkerchief, "Of course, M. Bismarck has spies everywhere. But all the same it was quick work!"

Her face was immovable. No guilty flush stained its smooth ivory surface. Only the lines about her scarlet mouth sharpened, that was all.

Straz went on, peevishly, strolling to the fireplace, and leaning an elbow on the corner of the mantelshelf.

"I suppose they call that princely hospitality--to send a man who has traveled night and day, and is decanted out of a crazy railway-station droschke at the door of their confounded Stammschloss at five o'clock in the morning--to an inn!"

She said in a velvet tone of amorous insinuation, and with a glance of sleepy fire:

"To an inn where Love lay waiting!..."

"Truly," he admitted, "but how were they to know that you were there? What possible connection could have been imagined between two chance travelers--I--arriving from Paris--you coming from Berlin? Besides--to send me to a summer tavern on the banks of the Danube!--when they have two hundred bedrooms at the Schloss! If that is princely hospitality, I tell you that I spit upon it! I grind it under the heel of my boot!"

Her nostrils dilated with disgust as he demonstrated by spitting on the hearthrug. She said, meeting his angry black stare with eyes that were of the color of tawny wine:

"The Prince cannot have regretted his omission to accommodate you with an apartment, when the Emperor's message was made known to him!"

He demanded:

"Am I a hired bravo? _Pardieu_! your words suggest it. Were either of the old man's sons in danger personally, from me? Not at all! I but repeated a lesson--gave a warning as it had been given.... But I understand--you have been chagrined by the nature of your reception from the Federal Chancellor!"

She returned, now flushed and breathing deeply:

"It is true. I suffocate at the recollection. Give me time to breathe!"

She rose. Straz said, going over to her, taking both her hands, kissing them and replacing her in her chair:

"Compose yourself. Let me understand the attitude M. le Ministre is taking. I need not remind you that not until I had learned from you that, through the lamented Count Valverden, you were sufficiently acquainted with M. de Bismarck to obtain an interview, did I suggest that you should seek one. Well, you did, and it has taken place. You told him of the little episode I witnessed in January--on the day of the funeral of Victor Noir at Neuilly. Monseigneur the Prince Imperial was riding with his governor and escort--the Avenue of the Champs Elysées was blocked by troops. A charming girl threw M. Lulu a bunch of violets--made a little scene of loyalty and enthusiasm in contrast with the unamiable attitude of the crowd assembled. An equerry dismounted and gave the flowers to Monseigneur. He carried them with him as he galloped toward the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing of importance in that, perhaps, had he not afterward sent for the equerry who had picked up the flowers, and said to him, blushing, '_Pray tell me who was she?_' So skilled a master of phrases as M. de Bismarck could hardly have undervalued the question from the heir to an Empire, taken in combination with the blush. Or discounted the importance of the fact that, later, when the equerry brought him the information that the charming unknown was the daughter and only child of a certain gallant Colonel commanding the 777th Regiment of Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard--at that moment quartered at Versailles,--Monseigneur said, with another blush as ingenuous as the first, 'I am glad she is the daughter of so brave a soldier! Possibly I may meet her one of these days.' Being told that her baptismal name was 'Juliette' he blushed once more, and wrote it down,--together with Mademoiselle's surname and address,--in a little memorandum-book he habitually carries.... And there, my exquisite Adelaide--if your narrative style did credit to my teaching, the interest of M. de Bismarck should have been engaged."

She lowered her chin and drooped her somber eyelids, and said with curling lips:

"It was. He took out his watch, and told me: 'I can hear you for three minutes longer! Has the Prince Imperial--with the disinterested assistance of those about him, altered that possibility into a certainty?' I explained to him then that nothing further had come of the _rencontre_,--though measures had been taken to preserve Monseigneur's interest from dying for lack of excitement, bouquets of violets being sent to him at regular intervals, with a slip of paper attached to the stems, upon which had been written in an unformed, girlish hand--'_From one who prays for the Hope of France!_'

"And then?..."

"Then M. de Bismarck spoke, keeping his thumb all the time on the watch-dial: 'So! The girl plays the part of an ingenue for the present! Will she keep these airs of candor and innocence when she has got her claws on that poor stripling? And do you suggest that the Prussian Secret Service should supply her with funds for the carrying out of her design, whatever it may be? Are we to lay our heads together, like the Brethren in the libretto of Mehul's opera "Joseph," and sing in chorus: _This is the heir. Come, let us kill him!_'"

"Even Beelzebub," said Straz, "can quote from Scripture when it suits him. I suppose you were annoyed, and showed it--which was an error of judgment on your part!"

"I rose up," said she, and suited the action to the word, "with indignation, assuring M. de Bismarck that his suspicions were unjust. That the young girl mentioned was of ancient family and irreproachable morals, convent-bred and highly educated. And that I, myself, being her nearest living relative of her own sex, was able to vouch for the fact. I added that the interest displayed in her by Monseigneur the Prince--who until that moment had never been known to look at a woman--led me to conceive that by aid of a few deft hints, a little discreet encouragement--another distant glimpse--a meeting accidentally brought about in some retired spot favorable to the revival of first impressions, an influence might be brought to bear upon the Imperial boy which might develop his mind and mold his character. Somehow in my agitation the name of Juliette de Bayard escaped me. 'De Bayard,' exclaimed M. de Bismarck. 'So! You are her mother!' Great Heaven!--the intolerable tone in which he uttered the words! Only the most abandoned of her sex could have supported the insulting irony of the look accompanying them. Choking, I took my leave.... He accompanied me to the staircase, with a false appearance of courtesy. As I turned to descend, he hurled the last insult of all! Nicolas, do not ask me to repeat the sentences!--and yet, I must have them written in another memory.... He twitted me with my nationality before his secretary and servants. He likened me to a mythological character with an unpronounceable name.... He said only a modern mother would be infamous enough to devote her only daughter to Venus Something-Or-Other.... Next to my husband, I detest that man!"

Straz had been pulling at his moist red underlip as she raved out her story in a frenzy of rage and resentment, intensified by the necessity of speaking in a lowered tone. Now he dragged the feature out as though it had been made of india-rubber, let it snap back, and said, shrugging his bull's shoulders and getting up:

"You are a woman and he is--Bismarck! He does not for the moment want the wares you desire to sell him. It is unlike him--the diplomat who could encourage M. Benedetti to lay before him the Emperor's _projet de traité_ in writing--and lock it away for use at a future opportunity--not to be willing to secure an advantage--placed before him with clearness and skill--in the newly awakened fancy of a schoolboy who, if he lives, will be an Emperor--for a charming and innocent young girl!" He pronounced these words as though they were smeared with something sweet and luscious, licking his lips gently, and rolling his dead black eyes in sensual enjoyment. "As regards your husband, he has certainly not replied to the letter of your solicitors, but why do you hate the unlucky man?"

"Do you ask?" Adelaide demanded, with glittering eyes and heaving bosom. "Did he not refuse to divorce me? Should I not have legally borne the title of Baroness von Valverden if his sentimental prejudices had not blocked the way?"

Straz pulled his waved beard, and said, delicately separating a strand of it from the rest, and keeping it between his thick white fingers:

"Sentimental, why sentimental? Do you not even give him credit for sufficient spirit to resent being made ridiculous? The desire to be revenged--you will not even allow him that?"

She bit her scarlet underlip and answered, breathing quickly:

"He was too good, too high-minded--too chivalrous--oh! 'tis ridiculous, I admit!" for Straz commenced to titter silently, screwing up the corners of his eyes and shaking his shoulders, as he sat with his thick, short arms folded on his chest. "An idea to make you hug yourself as you are doing. But true, nevertheless! He would have said--at this distance of time I can still hear him preaching: '_I will avenge the injury to my honor when I am confronted with my enemy. I will not revenge myself upon the woman who deserted me for him!_'"

The words came, not in her own voice. Straz left off sniggering. He said to himself, considering her through narrowed lids:

"Those were De Bayard's actual words. I wonder, since she has neither seen nor heard from him since she left him, how it is she knew that they were spoken? Some obliging mutual friend may have repeated them. Or she read them in some letter of his, written to Count Valverden. That is quite possible. But the question is, whether she would detest him so bitterly if her passion for him were absolutely extinguished. She is even jealous when one speaks of their daughter, whom he worships.... I will play her on this string--it may be useful, who knows?"

Aloud he said:

"Detest your husband, dear friend, if it affords you entertainment. Probably he deserves it, though women I have met who knew him vowed him _un crème d'homme_, worthy of the name he bears." He smiled in his beard, hearing her foot tap upon the shining parquet, and went on. "Men have praised his gallantry and his disinterestedness----"

"'Disinterestedness!'" she mocked. "Truly--to the point of fanaticism he is disinterested. Have we not to thank that characteristic for the ruin of our plans?"

Said Straz:

"A little more subtlety upon the part of your solicitors, and you might have found M. le Colonel less obstinately inclined to discourage the idea of a reconciliation. To have entrusted a portrait to the hands of the lawyers would have been an excellent move. Once convinced that the thirteen or fourteen years that have elapsed since you--parted--have increased rather than diminished the beauty that once he worshiped--and I fancy De Bayard would have accepted your terms!"

He sniggered, and waited as the violet shadows about her brilliant eyes deepened, and she breathed more quickly. Then he went on:

"They were generous--I allude to the conditions. Ninety men out of a hundred would have accepted them. For what has De Bayard to condone that others have not winked at? You were a mere girl, weary of separation from a husband who doubtless consoled himself after his own fashion, for his detention in the Crimea. Bored to desperation--condemned to spend your days in the care of a child, and in listening to the imbecile grumblings of a sick old devotee,--point out to me the woman, young, beautiful, brilliant, and ambitious--who would not--in your place--have done precisely as you did?"

She threw her head a little backward, bringing into prominence the superb modeling of her columnar throat and the heavy lines of the lower jaw. Her wine-colored eyes considered him between their narrowed lids. She savored his words, silently, with palpitating nostrils, and rippling movements of the muscles of her tightly closed lips. And the qualities of treachery and cruelty, mingling in her strange character with sensuality, and pride, and recklessness, were written upon her beauty as plainly as they are stamped upon the individuality of a tigress, or a poisonous snake.

"You speak of weariness ... of boredom..." She spoke between her teeth, accentuating the vowels and prolonging the sibilants: "Nicolas, it was hellish--that _ménage_ at Auteuil!..." She clenched the white hand that rested on the chair-arm and continued, looking with burning eyes through Straz into the past.

"That woman--my husband's mother, with her parade of devotion for the absent. With her ceaseless repetition of 'my son,' 'my son's child,' and 'my son's wife!' ... Grand Dieu!--how she enraged me! How she made me hate--hate--hate them!--yes! all three.... Perhaps myself also, most bitterly of all!"

"We have a curious proverb in my country," commented Straz, with his snigger: "'_I draw water from a well that has no bottom when I tell my gossip of the faults of my mother-in-law!_'"

She said, with undisguised scorn:

"I am not a collector of curios from your country!"

"Ah, but wait! Hear the rest of it!" said Straz, dexterously embroidering on the original: "'_But when my mother-in-law wishes to acquaint my husband with my good qualities, she will write them with the plume from a gnat's head, on the paper that wrapped a butterfly's egg, when she has bought her ink at the shop where they sell none!_'"

Adelaide continued, ignoring the labored witticism:

"In the letter of farewell that I wrote to De Bayard I said '_Your mother will console you, I have no doubt!_' ... How often I have imagined I could hear her talking to him.... He would weep on her knees, like a schoolboy. She would lead him to look at the child, asleep in its cot by the side of her bed, and tell him, '_Do not fear! She will not be like her mother! She will grow up candid and discreet and virtuous!_' Everything that Adelaide was not, you understand.... Ha, ha, ha! Absurd old creature! Were she not dead, I should detest her still!"

Straz mentally commented: "The daughter has inherited the hatred, unless I am mistaken." Aloud he said:

"The prophecy, if made, has not been fulfilled, my Adelaide.... Mademoiselle, if inferior to her mother in splendor and beauty, certainly has been dowered with her elegance and charm." He bunched the fingers of his right hand, kissed them, and launched the kiss, conjecturally, in the direction of Paris. "A pocket edition of Psyche before that little affair with Cupid! A rare jewel! A _chic_ type, give you my word!"

The daintily shod foot had beaten time, as Straz enlarged upon the theme of Juliette's perfections, to what might have been the tune of a tarantella: now it ceased. She laughed in the Roumanian's face, and cried, still laughing:

"A child! ... A schoolgirl--who has seen no more of the world than the pearl in the oyster! All this is too funny--_give you my word!_"

Said Straz, lolling his head against the chair-back and licking his red lips cattishly:

"Ah, but when the pearl-diver opened the oyster, he said: '_Here is a gem worth a Kingdom, or an Empire, when it shall be polished and properly set!_'"

"'Or an Empire!'"

She echoed the three words, throwing her head back in imitation of Straz's attitude, and looking at him with languid provocation. Then she yawned, showing her perfect teeth and the tip of a rosy tongue, and remarked with an air of boredom:

"My friend, whether your pearl be worth an Empire or a cabbage-plot, your chance of proving its value is forever forfeited, thanks to the obstinacy of M. de Bayard."