The Yellow Crayon
“Poor Horser! It was rather rough to pit a creature like that against
Souspennier.”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“Horser,” he said, “may not be brilliant, but he had a great
organisation at his back. Souspennier was without friends or influence.
The contest should scarcely have been so one-sided. To tell you the
truth, my dear Muriel, I am more surprised that you yourself should have
found the task beyond you.”
Lady Carey’s face darkened.
“It was too soon after the loss of Lucille,” she said, “and besides,
there was his vanity to be reckoned with. It was like a challenge to
him, and he had taken up the glove before I returned to New York.”
The Duchess looked up from her work.
“Have you had any conversation with my husband, Prince?” she asked.
The Prince of Saxe Leinitzer twirled his heavy moustache and sank into a
chair between the two women.
“I have had a long talk with him,” he announced. “And the result?” the
Duchess asked.
“The result I fear you would scarcely consider satisfactory,” the Prince
declared. “The moment that I hinted at the existence of--er--conditions
of which you, Duchess, are aware, he showed alarm, and I had all that
I could do to reassure him. I find it everywhere amongst your
aristocracy--this stubborn confidence in the existence of the reigning
order of things, this absolute detestation of anything approaching
intrigue.”
“My dear man, I hope you don’t include me,” Lady Carey exclaimed.
“You, Lady Muriel,” he answered, with a slow smile, “are an exception to
all rules. No, you are a rule by yourself.”
“To revert to the subject then for a moment,” the Duchess said stiffly.
“You have made no progress with the Duke?”
“None whatever,” Saxe Leinitzer admitted. “He was sufficiently emphatic
to inspire me with every caution. Even now I have doubts as to whether
I have altogether reassured him. I really believe, dear Duchess, that we
should be better off if you could persuade him to go and live upon his
estates.”
The Duchess smiled grimly.
“Whilst the House of Lords exists,” she remarked, “you will never
succeed in keeping Algernon away from London. He is always on the point
of making a speech, although he never does it.”
“I have heard of that speech,” Lady Carey drawled, from her low seat.
“It is to be a thoroughly enlightening affair. All the great social
questions are to be permanently disposed of. The Prime Minister will
come on his knees and beg Algernon to take his place.”
The Duchess looked up over her knitting.
“Algernon is at least in earnest,” she remarked drily. “And he has the
good conscience of a clean living and honest man.”
“What an unpleasant possession it must be,” Lady Carey remarked sweetly.
“I disposed of my conscience finally many years ago. I am not sure, but
I believe that it was the Prince to whom I entrusted the burying of it.
By the bye, Lucille will be here directly, I suppose. Is she to be told
of Souspennier’s arrival in London?”
“I imagine,” the Prince said, with knitted brows, “that it will not be
wise to keep it from her. It is impossible to conceal her whereabouts,
and the papers will very shortly acquaint her with his.”
“And,” Lady Carey asked, “how does the little affair progress?”
“Admirably,” the Prince answered. “Already some of the Society papers
are beginning to chatter about the friendship existing between a Cabinet
Minister and a beautiful Hungarian lady of title, etc., etc. The fact of
it is that Brott is in deadly earnest. He gives himself away every time.
If Lucille has not lost old cleverness she will be able to twist him
presently around her little finger.”
“If only some one would twist him on the rack,” the Duchess murmured
vindictively. “I tried to read one of his speeches the other day. It was
nothing more nor less than blasphemy. I do not think that I am naturally
a cruel woman, but I would hand such men over to the public executioner
with joy.”
Lucille came in, as beautiful as ever, but with tired lines under her
full dark eyes. She sank into a low chair with listless grace.
“Reginald Brott again, I suppose,” she remarked curtly. “I wish the man
had never existed.”
“That is a very cruel speech, Lucille,” the Prince said, with a
languishing glance towards her, “for if it had not been for Brott we
should never have dared to call you out from your seclusion.”
“Then more heartily than ever,” Lucille declared, “I wish the man had
never been born. You cannot possibly flatter yourself, Prince, that your
summons was a welcome one.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I shall never, be able to believe,” he said, “that the Countess
Radantz was able to do more than support existence in a small American
town--without society, with no scope for her ambitions, detached
altogether from the whole civilized world.”
“Which only goes to prove, Prince,” Lucille remarked contemptuously,
“that you do not understand me in the least. As a place of residence
Lenox would compare very favourably with--say Homburg, and for
companionship you forget my husband. I never met the woman yet who did
not prefer the company of one man, if only it were the right one, to the
cosmopolitan throng we call society.”
“It sounds idyllic, but very gauche,” Lady Carey remarked drily. “In
effect it is rather a blow on the cheek for you, Prince. Of course you
know that the Prince is in love with you, Lucille?”
“I wish he were,” she answered, looking lazily out of the window.
He bent over her.
“Why?”
“I would persuade him to send me home again,” she answered coldly.
The Duchess looked up from her knitting. “Your husband has saved you the
journey,” she remarked, “even if you were able to work upon the Prince’s
good nature to such an extent.”
Lucille started round eagerly.
“What do you mean?” she cried.
“Your husband is in London,” the Duchess answered.
Lucille laughed with the gaiety of a child. Like magic the lines from
beneath her eyes seemed to have vanished. Lady Carey watched her with
pale cheeks and malevolent expression.
“Come, Prince,” she cried mockingly, “it was only a week ago that you
assured me that my husband could not leave America. Already he is in
London. I must go to see him. Oh, I insist upon it.”
Saxe Leinitzer glanced towards the Duchess. She laid down her knitting.
“My dear Countess,” she said firmly, “I beg that you will listen to me
carefully. I speak to you for your own good, and I believe I may add,
Prince, that I speak with authority.”
“With authority!” the Prince echoed.
“We all,” the Duchess continued, “look upon your husband’s arrival as
inopportune and unfortunate. We are all agreed that you must be kept
apart. Certain obligations have been laid upon you. You could not
possibly fulfil them with a husband at your elbow. The matter will be
put plainly before your husband, as I am now putting it before you. He
will be warned not to attempt to see or communicate with you as your
husband. If he or you disobey the consequences will be serious.”
Lucille shrugged her shoulders.
“It is easy to talk,” she said, “but you will not find it easy to keep
Victor away when he has found out where I am.”
The Prince intervened.
“We have no objection to your meeting,” he said, “but it must be as
acquaintances. There must be no intermission or slackening in your task,
and that can only be properly carried out by the Countess Radantz and
from Dorset House.”
Lucille smothered her disappointment.
“Dear me,” she said. “You will find Victor a little hard to persuade.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then the Prince spoke slowly, and watching
carefully the effect of his words upon Lucille.
“Countess,” he said, “it has been our pleasure to make of your task so
far as possible a holiday. Yet perhaps it is wiser to remind you that
underneath the glove is an iron hand. We do not often threaten, but
we brook no interference. We have the means to thwart it. I bear no
ill-will to your husband, but to you I say this. If he should be so mad
as to defy us, to incite you to disobedience, he must pay the penalty.”
A servant entered.
“Mr. Reginald Brott is in the small drawing-room, your Grace,” he
announced. “He enquired for the Countess Radantz.”
Lucille rose. When the servant had disappeared she turned round for a
moment, and faced the Prince. A spot of colour burned in her cheeks, her
eyes were bright with anger.
“I shall remember your words, Prince,” she said. “So far from mine
being, however, a holiday task, it is one of the most wearisome and
unpleasant I ever undertook. And in return for your warnings let me tell
you this. If you should bring any harm upon my husband you shall answer
for it all your days to me. I will do my duty. Be careful that you do
not exceed yours.”
She swept out of the room. Lady Carey laughed mockingly at the Prince.
“Poor Ferdinand!” she exclaimed.
CHAPTER XIII
He had been kept waiting longer than usual, and he had somehow the
feeling that his visit was ill-timed, when at last she came to him. He
looked up eagerly as she entered the little reception room which he had
grown to know so well during the last few weeks, and it struck him for
the first time that her welcome was a little forced, her eyes a little
weary.
“I haven’t,” he said apologetically, “the least right to be here.”
“At least,” she murmured, “I may be permitted to remind you that you are
here without an invitation.”
“The worse luck,” he said, “that one should be necessary.”
“This is the one hour of the day,” she remarked, sinking into a large
easy-chair, “which I devote to repose. How shall I preserve my fleeting
youth if you break in upon it in this ruthless manner?”
“If I could only truthfully say that I was sorry,” he answered, “but I
can’t. I am here--and I would rather be here than anywhere else in the
world.”
She looked at him with curving lips; and even he, who had watched her
often, could not tell whether that curve was of scorn or mirth.
“They told me,” she said impressively, “that you were different--a
woman-hater, honest, gruff, a little cynical. Yet those are the speeches
of your salad days. What a disenchantment!”
“The things which one invents when one is young,” he said, “come perhaps
fresh from the heart in later life. The words may sound the same, but
there is a difference.”
“Come,” she said, “you are improving. That at any rate is ingenious.
Suppose you tell me now what has brought you here before four o’clock,
when I am not fit to be seen?”
He smiled. She shrugged her shoulders.
“I mean it. I haven’t either my clothes or my manners on yet. Come,
explain.”
“I met a man who interested me,” he answered. “He comes from America,
from Lenox!”
He saw her whiten. He saw her fingers clutch the sides of her chair.
“From Lenox? And his name?”
“The Duke of Souspennier! He takes himself so seriously that he even
travels incognito. At the hotel he calls himself Mr. Sabin.”
“Indeed!”
“I wondered whether you might not know him?”
“Yes, I know him.”
“And in connection with this man,” Brott continued, “I have something in
the nature of a confession to make. I forgot for a moment your request.
I even mentioned your name.”
The pallor had spread to her cheeks, even to her lips. Yet her eyes were
soft and brilliant, so brilliant that they fascinated him.
“What did he say? What did he ask?”
“He asked for your address. Don’t be afraid. I made some excuse. I did
not give it.”
For the life of him he could not tell whether she was pleased or
disappointed. She had turned her shoulder to him. She was looking
steadily out of the window, and he could not see her face.
“Why are you curious about him?” she asked.
“I wish I knew. I think only because he came from Lenox.”