The Yellow Crayon
“I came,” she said, “because I heard that you were about to take a step
which must separate us for ever.”
“And that,” he asked, “disturbed you?”
“Yes!”
“Come, we are drawing nearer together,” he said, a kindling light in
his eyes. “Now answer me this. How much do you care if this eternal
separation does come? Here am I on the threshold of action. Unless I
change my mind within ten minutes I must throw in my lot with those whom
you and your Order loathe and despise. There can be no half measures.
I must be their leader, or I must vanish from the face of the
political world. This I will do if you bid me. But the price must be
yourself--wholly, without reservation--yourself, body and soul.”
“You care--as much as that?” she murmured.
“Ask me no questions, answer mine!” he cried fiercely. “You shall stay
with me here--or in five minutes I leave on my campaign.”
She laughed musically.
“This is positively delicious,” she exclaimed. “I am being made love to
in medieval fashion. Other times other manners, sir! Will you listen to
reason?”
“I will listen to nothing--save your answer, yes or no,” he declared,
drawing on his overcoat.
She laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Reginald,” she said, “you are like the whirlwind--and how can I answer
you in five minutes!”
“You can answer me in one,” he declared fiercely. “Will you pay my price
if I do your bidding? Yes or no! The price is yourself. Now! Yes or no?”
She drew on her own cloak and fastened the clasp with shaking fingers.
Then she turned towards the door.
“I wish you good-bye and good fortune, Reginald,” she said. “I daresay
we may not meet again. It will be better that we do not.”
“This then is your answer?” he cried.
She looked around at him. Was it his fancy, or were those tears in her
eyes? Or was she really so wonderful an actress?
“Do you think,” she said, “that if I had not cared I should have come
here?”
“Tell me that in plain words,” he cried. “It is all I ask.”
The door was suddenly opened. Grahame stood upon the threshold. He
looked beyond Lucille to Brott.
“You must really forgive me,” he said, “but there is barely time to
catch the train, Brott. I have a hansom waiting, and your luggage is
on.”
Brott answered nothing. Lucille held out her hands to him.
“Yes or no?” he asked her in a low hoarse tone.
“You must--give me time! I don’t want to lose you. I--”
He caught up his coat.
“Coming, Grahame,” he said firmly. “Countess, I must beg your pardon
ten thousand times for this abrupt departure. My servants will call your
carriage.”
She leaned towards him, beautiful, anxious, alluring.
“Reginald!”
“Yes or no,” he whispered in her ear.
“Give me until to-morrow,” she faltered.
“Not one moment,” he answered. “Yes--now, this instant--or I go!”
“Brott! My dear man, we have not a second to lose.”
“You hear!” he muttered. “Yes or no?”
She trembled.
“Give me until to-morrow,” she begged. “It is for your own sake. For
your own safety.”
He turned on his heel! His muttered speech was profane, but
inarticulate. He sprang into the hansom by Grahame’s side.
“Euston!” the latter cried through the trap-door. “Double fare, cabby.
We must catch the Scotchman.”
Lucille came out a few moments later, and looked up and down the street
as her brougham drove smartly up. The hansom was fast disappearing in
the distance. She looked after it and sighed.
CHAPTER XXVI
Lucille gave a little start of amazement as she realised that she was
not alone in the brougham. She reached out for the check-cord, but a
strong hand held hers.
“My dear Lucille,” a familiar voice exclaimed, “why this alarm? Is it
your nerves or your eyesight which is failing you?”
Her hand dropped. She turned towards him.
“It is you, then, Prince!” she said. “But why are you here? I do not
understand.”
The Prince shrugged his shoulders.
“It is so simple,” he said. “We are all very anxious indeed to hear the
result of your interview with Brott--and apart from that, I personally
have too few opportunities to act as your escort to let a chance go by.
I trust that my presence is not displeasing to you?”
She laughed a little uneasily.
“It is at any rate unnecessary,” she answered. “But since you are here I
may as well make my confession. I have failed.”
“It is incredible,” the Prince murmured.
“As you will--but it is true,” she answered. “I have done my very best,
or rather my worst, and the result has been failure. Mr. Brott has a
great friend--a man named Grahame, whose influence prevailed against
mine. He has gone to Scotland.”
“That is serious news,” the Prince said quietly.
Lucille leaned back amongst the cushions.
“After all,” she declared, “we are all out of place in this country.
There is no scope whatever for such schemes and intrigues as you and all
the rest of them delight in. In France and Russia, even in Austria,
it is different. The working of all great organisation there is
underground--it is easy enough to meet plot by counterplot, to suborn,
to deceive, to undermine. But here all the great games of life seem to
be played with the cards upon the table. We are hopelessly out of place.
I cannot think, Prince, what ill chance led you to ever contemplate
making your headquarters in London.”
The Prince stroked his long moustache.
“That is all very well, Lucille,” he said, “but you must remember that
in England we have very large subscriptions to the Order. These people
will not go on paying for nothing. There was a meeting of the London
branch a few months ago, and it was decided that unless some practical
work was done in this country all English subscriptions should cease. We
had no alternative but to come over and attempt something. Brott is of
course the bete noire of our friends here. He is distinctly the man to
be struck at.”
“And what evil stroke of fortune,” Lucille asked, “induced you to send
for me?”
“That is a very cruel speech, dear lady,” the Prince murmured.
“I hope,” Lucille said, “that you have never for a moment imagined that
I find any pleasure in what I am called upon to do.”
“Why not? It must be interesting. You can have had no sympathy with
Brott--a hopeless plebeian, a very paragon of Anglo-Saxon stupidity?”
Lucille laughed scornfully.
“Reginald Brott is a man, at any rate, and an honest one,” she answered.
“But I am too selfish to think much of him. It is myself whom I pity. I
have a home, Prince, and a husband. I want them both.”
“You amaze me,” the Prince said slowly. “Lucille, indeed, you amaze me.
You have been buried alive for three years. Positively we believed that
our summons would sound to you like a message from Heaven.”
Lucille was silent for a moment. She rubbed the mist from the carriage
window and looked out into the streets.
“Well,” she said, “I hope that you realise now how completely you
have misunderstood me. I was perfectly happy in America. I have been
perfectly miserable here. I suppose that I have grown too old for
intrigues and adventures.”
“Too old, Lucille,” the Prince murmured, leaning a little towards her.
“Lucille, you are the most beautiful woman in London. Many others may
have told you so, but there is no one, Lucille, who is so devotedly, so
hopelessly your slave as I.”
She drew her hand away, and sat back in her corner. The man’s hot
breath fell upon her cheek, his eyes seemed almost phosphorescent in the
darkness. Lucille could scarcely keep the biting words from her tongue.
“You do not answer me, Lucille. You do not speak even a single kind
word to me. Come! Surely we are old friends. We should understand one
another. It is not a great deal that I ask from your kindness--not a
great deal to you, but it is all the difference between happiness and
misery for me.”
“This is a very worn-out game, Prince,” Lucille said coldly. “You have
been making love to women in very much the same manner for twenty years,
and I--well, to be frank, I am utterly weary of being made love to
like a doll. Laugh at me as you will, my husband is the only man who
interests me in the slightest. My failure to-day is almost welcome to
me. It has at least brought my work here to a close. Come, Prince, if
you want to earn my eternal gratitude, tell me now that I am a free
woman.”
“You give me credit,” the Prince said slowly, “for great generosity. If
I let you go it seems to me that I shall lose you altogether. You will
go to your husband. He will take you away!”
“Why not?” Lucille asked. “I want to go. I am tired of London. You
cannot lose what you never possessed--what you never had the slightest
chance of possessing.”
The Prince laughed softly--not a pleasant laugh, not even a mirthful
one.
“Dear lady,” he said, “you speak not wisely. For I am very much in
earnest when I say that I love you, and until you are kinder to me I
shall not let you go.”
“That is rather a dangerous threat, is it not?” Lucille asked. “You dare
to tell me openly that you will abuse your position, that you will
keep me bound a servant to the cause, because of this foolish fancy of
yours?”
The Prince smiled at her through the gloom--a white, set smile.
“It is no foolish fancy, Lucille. You will find that out before long.
You have been cold to me all your life. Yet you would find me a better
friend than enemy.”
“If I am to choose,” she said steadily, “I shall choose the latter.”
“As you will,” he answered. “In time you will change your mind.”
The carriage had stopped. The Prince alighted and held out his hand.
Lucille half rose, and then with her foot upon the step she paused and
looked around.
“Where are we?” she exclaimed. “This is not Dorset House.”
“No, we are in Grosvenor Square,” the Prince answered. “I forgot to tell
you that we have a meeting arranged for here this evening. Permit me.”
But Lucille resumed her seat in the carriage.
“It is your house, is it not?” she asked.
“Yes. My house assuredly.”
“Very well,” Lucille said. “I will come in when the Duchess of Dorset
shows herself at the window or the front door--or Felix, or even De
Brouillae.”
The Prince still held open the carriage door.
“They will all be here,” he assured her. “We are a few minutes early.”
“Then I will drive round to Dorset House and fetch the Duchess. It is
only a few yards.”
The Prince hesitated. His cheeks were very white, and something like a
scowl was blackening his heavy, insipid face.
“Lucille,” he said, “you are very foolish. It is not much I ask of you,
but that little I will have or I pledge my word to it that things shall
go ill with you and your husband. There is plain speech for you. Do not
be absurd. Come within, and let us talk. What do you fear? The house is
full of servants, and the carriage can wait for you here.”
Lucille smiled at him--a maddening smile.
“I am not a child,” she said, “and such conversations as I am forced to
hold with you will not be under your own roof. Be so good as to tell the
coachman to drive to Dorset House.”
The Prince turned on his heel with a furious oath.
“He can drive you to Hell,” he answered thickly.
Lucille found the Duchess and Lady Carey together at Dorset House. She
looked from one to the other.
“I thought that there was a meeting to-night,” she remarked.
The Duchess shook her head.
“Not to-night,” she answered. “It would not be possible. General
Dolinski is dining at Marlborough House, and De Broullae is in Paris.
Now tell us all about Mr. Brott.”
“He has gone to Scotland,” Lucille answered. “I have failed.”
Lady Carey looked up from the depths of the chair in which she was
lounging.
“And the prince?” she asked. “He went to meet you!”
“He also failed,” Lucille answered.
CHAPTER XXVII