The Yellow Crayon
compromising. Letheringham is a nerveless leader. We should have gone
pottering on for another seven years. Thank God that you came when you
did. See here!”
He tossed him over a letter. Grahame’s cheek paled as he read.
“Already!” he murmured.
Brott nodded.
“Read it!”
Grahame devoured every word. His eyes lit up with excitement.
“My prophecy exactly,” he exclaimed, laying it down. “It is as I said.
He cannot form the ministry without you. His letter is abject. He gives
himself away. It is an entreaty. And your answer?”
“Has not yet gone,” Brott said. “You shall write it yourself if you
like. I am thankful that you came when you did.”
“You were hesitating?” Grahame exclaimed.
“I was.”
Grahame looked at him in wonder, and Brott faced him sturdily.
“It seems like treason to you, Grahame!” he said. “So it does to me
now. I want nothing in the future to come between us,” he continued
more slowly, “and I should like if I can to expunge the memory of this
interview. And so I am going to tell you the truth.” Grahame held out
his hand.
“Don’t!” he said. “I can forget without.”
Brott shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You had better understand everything. The halfpenny
press told the truth. Yet only half the truth. I have been to all
these places, wasted my time, wasted their time, from a purely selfish
reason--to be near the only woman I have ever cared for, the woman,
Grahame!”
“I knew it,” Grahame murmured. “I fought against the belief, I thought
that I had stifled it. But I knew it all the time.”
“If I have seemed lukewarm sometimes of late,” Brott said, “there is the
cause. She is an aristocrat, and my politics are hateful to her. She has
told me so seriously, playfully, angrily. She has let me feel it in a
hundred ways. She has drawn me into discussions and shown the utmost
horror of my views. I have cared for her all my life, and she knows
it. And I think, Grahame, that lately she has been trying constantly,
persistently, to tone down my opinions. She has let me understand that
they are a bar between us. And it is a horrible confession, Grahame, but
I believe that I was wavering. This invitation from Letheringham seemed
such a wonderful opportunity for compromise.”
“This must never go out of the room,” Grahame said hoarsely. “It would
ruin your popularity. They would never trust you again.”
“I shall tell no one else,” Brott said.
“And it is over?” Grahame demanded eagerly.
“It is over.”
* * * * *
The Duke of Dorset, who entertained for his party, gave a great dinner
that night at Dorset House, and towards its close the Prince of Saxe
Leinitzer, who was almost the only non-political guest, moved up to his
host in response to an eager summons. The Duke was perturbed.
“You have heard the news, Saxe Leinitzer?”
“I did not know of any news,” the Prince answered. “What is it?”
“Brott has refused to join with Letheringham in forming a ministry. It
is rumoured even that a coalition was proposed, and that Brott would
have nothing to do with it.”
The Prince looked into his wineglass.
“Ah!” he said.
“This is disturbing news,” the Duke continued. “You do not seem to
appreciate its significance.”
The Prince looked up again.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “You shall explain to me.”
“Brott refuses to compromise,” the Duke said. “He stands for a ministry
of his own selection. Heaven only knows what mischief this may mean.
His doctrines are thoroughly revolutionary. He is an iconoclast with a
genius for destruction. But he has the ear of the people. He is to-day
their Rienzi.”
The Prince nodded.
“And Lucille?” he remarked. “What does she say?”
“I have not spoken to her,” the Duke answered. “The news has only just
come.”
“We will speak to her,” the Prince said, “together.”
Afterwards in the library there was a sort of informal meeting, and
their opportunity came.
“So you have failed, Countess,” her host said, knitting his grey brows
at her.
She smilingly acknowledged defeat.
“But I can assure you,” she said, “that I was very near success. Only
on Monday he had virtually made up his mind to abandon the extreme party
and cast in his lot with Letheringham. What has happened to change him I
do not know.”
The Prince curled his fair moustache.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that he changed his mind. For one thing is
very certain. The Duke and I are agreed upon it. A Brott ministry must
never be formed.”
She looked up quickly.
“What do you mean?”
The Prince answered her without hesitation.
“If one course fails,” he said, “another must be adopted. I regret
having to make use of means which are somewhat clumsy and obvious. But
our pronouncement on this one point is final. Brott must not be allowed
to form a ministry.”
She looked at him with something like horror in her soft full eyes.
“What would you do?” she murmured.
The Prince shrugged his shoulders.
“Well,” he said, “we are not quite medieval enough to adopt the only
really sensible method and remove Mr. Brott permanently from the face of
the earth. We should stop a little short of that, but I can assure you
that Mr. Brott’s health for the next few months is a matter for grave
uncertainty. It is a pity for his sake that you failed.”
She bit her lip.
“Do you know if he is still in London?” she asked.
“He must be on the point of leaving for Scotland,” the Duke answered.
“If he once mounts the platform at Glasgow there will be no further
chance of any compromise. He will be committed irretrievably to his
campaign of anarchy.”
“And to his own disaster,” the Prince murmured.
Lucille remained for a moment deep in thought. Then she looked up.
“If I can find him before he starts,” she said hurriedly, “I will make
one last effort.”
CHAPTER XXV
He peered forward over his desk at the tall graceful figure whose
entrance had been so noiseless, and whose footsteps had been so light
that she stood almost within a few feet of him before he was even aware
of her presence. Then his surprise was so great that he could only gasp
out her name.
“You! Lucille!”
She smiled upon him delightfully.
“Me! Lucille! Don’t blame your servant. I assured him that I was
expected, so he allowed me to enter unannounced. His astonishment was
a delightful testimony to your reputation, by the bye. He was evidently
not used to these invasions.”
Brott had recovered himself by this time, and if any emotion still
remained he was master of it.
“You must forgive my surprise!” he said. “You have of course something
important to say to me. Will you not loosen your cloak?”
She unfastened the clasp and seated herself in his most comfortable
chair. The firelight flashed and glittered on the silver ornaments of
her dress; her neck and arms, with their burden of jewels, gleamed like
porcelain in the semi-darkness outside the halo of his student lamp. And
he saw that her dark hair hung low behind in graceful folds as he had
once admired it. He stood a little apart, and she noted his traveling
clothes and the various signs of a journey about the room.
“You may be glad to see me,” she remarked, looking at him with a smile.
“You don’t look it.”
“I am anxious to hear your news,” he answered. “I am convinced that you
have something important to say to me.”
“Supposing,” she answered, still looking at him steadily, “supposing
I were to say that I had no object in coming here at all--that it was
merely a whim? What should you say then?”
“I should take the liberty,” he answered quietly, “of doubting the
evidence of my senses.”
There was a moment’s silence. She felt his aloofness. It awoke in her
some of the enthusiasm with which this mission itself had failed to
inspire her. This man was measuring his strength against hers.
“It was not altogether a whim,” she said, her eyes falling from his,
“and yet--now I am here--it does not seem easy to say what was in my
mind.”
He glanced towards the clock.
“I fear,” he said, “that it may sound ungallant, but in case this
somewhat mysterious mission of yours is of any importance I had better
perhaps tell you that in twenty minutes I must leave to catch the Scotch
mail.”
She rose at once to her feet, and swept her cloak haughtily around her.
“I have made a mistake,” she said. “Be so good as to pardon my
intrusion. I shall not trouble you again.”
She was half-way across the room. She was at the door, her hand was upon
the handle. He was white to the lips, his whole frame was shaking with
the effort of intense repression. He kept silence, till only a flutter
of her cloak was to be seen in the doorway. And then the cry which he
had tried so hard to stifle broke from his lips.
“Lucille! Lucille!”
She hesitated, and came back--looking at him, so he thought, with
trembling lips and eyes soft with unshed tears.
“I was a brute,” he murmured. “I ought to be grateful for this chance of
seeing you once more, of saying good-bye to you.”
“Good-bye!” she repeated.
“Yes,” he said gravely. “It must be good-bye. I have a great work before
me, and it will cut me off completely from all association with your
world and your friends. Something wider and deeper than an ocean will
divide us. Something so wide that our hands will never reach across.”
“You can talk about it very calmly,” she said, without looking at him.
“I have been disciplining myself,” he answered.
She rested her face upon her hand, and looked into the fire.
“I suppose,” she said, “this means that you have refused Mr.
Letheringham’s offer.”
“I have refused it,” he answered.
“I am sorry,” she said simply.
She rose from her chair with a sudden start, began to draw on her cloak,
and then let it fall altogether from her shoulders.
“Why do you do this?” she asked earnestly. “Is it that you are so
ambitious? You used not to be so--in the old days.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You too, then,” he said, “can remember. Ambitious! Well, why not? To
be Premier of England, to stand for the people, to carry through to its
logical consummation a bloodless revolution, surely this is worth while.
Is there anything in the world better worth having than power?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking him full in the eyes.
“What is it then? Let me know before it is too late.”
“Love!”
He threw his arms about her. For a moment she was powerless in his
grasp.
“So be it then,” he cried fiercely. “Give me the one, and I will deny
the other. Only no half measures! I will drink to the bottom of the cup
or not at all.”
She shook herself free from him, breathless, consumed with an anger to
which she dared not give voice. For a moment or two she was speechless.
Her bosom rose and fell, a bright streak of colour flared in her cheeks.
Brott stood away from her, white and stern.
“You--are clumsy!” she said. “You frighten me!”
Her words carried no conviction. He looked at her with a new suspicion.
“You talk like a child,” he answered roughly, “or else your whole
conduct is a fraud. For months I have been your slave. I have abandoned
my principles, given you my time, followed at your heels like a tame
dog. And for what? You will not marry me, you will not commit yourself
to anything. You are a past mistress in the art of binding fools to your
chariot wheels. You know that I love you--that there breathes on this
earth no other woman for me but you. I have told you this in all save
words a hundred times. And now--now it is my turn. I have been played
with long enough. You are here unbidden--unexpected. You can consider
that door locked. Now tell me why you came.”
Lucille had recovered herself. She stood before him, white but calm.
“Because,” she said, “I am a woman.”
“That means that you came without reason--on impulse?” he asked.