Chapter 15

Several times in the course of this narrative I have expressed my regret in not being an active witness of this or that scene, a regret which, as I am drawing most of these pictures from hearsay, is perfectly natural. What must have been the varying expressions on each face! Warburton, who, though there was tumult in his breast, coolly waited for Karloff to make the next move; Annesley, who saw his terrible secret in the possession of a man whom he supposed to be a stable-man; Karloff, who saw his house of cards vanish in the dartling tongues of flame, and recognized the futility of his villainy; the girl... Ah, who shall describe the dozen shadowy emotions which crossed and recrossed her face?

From Warburton's dramatic entrance upon the scene to Karloff's first movement, scarce a minute had passed, though to the girl and her father an eternity seemed to come and go. Karloff was a brave man. Upon the instant of his recovery, he sprang toward Warburton, silently and with predetermination: he must regain some fragment of those plans. He would not, could not, suffer total defeat before this girl's eyes; his blood rebelled against the thought. He expected the groom to strike him, but James simply caught him by the arms and thrust him back.

"No, Count; no, no; they shall burn to the veriest crisp!"

"Stand aside, lackey!" cried Karloff, a sob of rage strangling him. Again he rushed upon Warburton, his clenched hand uplifted. Warburton did not even raise his hands this time. So they stood, their faces within a hand's span of each other, the one smiling coldly, the other in the attitude of striking a blow. Karloff's hand fell unexpectedly, but not on the man in front of him. "Good God, no! a gentleman does not strike a lackey! Stand aside, stand aside!"

"They shall burn, Count,"--quietly; "they shall burn, because I am physically the stronger." Warburton turned quickly and with the toe of his boot shifted the glowing packet and renewed the flames. "I never realized till to-night that I loved my country half so well. Lackey? Yes, for the present."

He had not yet looked at the girl.

"Ah!" Karloff cried, intelligence lighting his face. "You are no lackey!"--subduing his voice.

James smiled. "You are quite remarkable."

"Who are you? I demand to know!"

"First and foremost, I am a citizen of the United States; I have been a soldier besides. It was my common right to destroy these plans, which indirectly menaced my country's safety. These,"--pointing to the bank-notes, "are yours, I believe. Nothing further requires your presence here."

"Yes, yes; I remember now! Fool that I have been!" Karloff struck his forehead in helpless rage. "I never observed you closely till now. I recall. The secret service: Europe, New York, Washington; you have known it all along. Spy!"

"That is an epithet which easily rebounds. Spy? Why, yes; I do for my country what you do for yours."

"The name, the name! I can not recollect the name! The beard is gone, but that does not matter,"--excitedly.

Warburton breathed easier. While he did not want the girl to know who he was just then, he was glad that Karloffs memory had taken his thought away from the grate and its valuable but rapidly disappearing fuel.

"Father! Father, what is it?" cried the girl, her voice keyed to agony. "Father!"

The two men turned about. Annesley had fainted in his chair. Both Warburton and Karloff mechanically started forward to offer aid, but she repelled their approach.

"Do not come near me; you have done enough. Father, dear!" She slapped the colonel's wrists and unloosed his collar.

The antagonists, forgetting their own battle, stood silently watching hers. Warburton's mind was first to clear, and without a moment's hesitation he darted from the room and immediately returned with a glass of water. He held it out to the girl. Their glances clashed; a thousand mute, angry questions in her eyes, a thousand mute, humble answers in his. She accepted the glass, and her hand trembled as she dipped her fingers into the cool depths and flecked the drops into the unconscious man's face.

Meanwhile Karloff stood with folded arms, staring melancholically into the grate, where his dreams had disappeared in smoke. By and by the colonel sighed and opened his eyes. For a time he did not know where he was, and his gaze wandered mistily from face to face. Then recollection came back to him, recollection bristling with thorns. He struggled to his feet and faced Warburton. The girl put her arms around him to steady him, but he gently disengaged himself.

"Are you from the secret service, sir? If so, I am ready to accompany you wherever you say. I, who have left my blood on many a battleground, was about to commit a treasonable act. Allow me first to straighten up my affairs, then you may do with me as you please. I am guilty of a crime; I have the courage to pay the penalty." His calm was extraordinary, and even Karloff looked at him with a sparkle of admiration.

As a plummet plunges into the sea, so the girl's look plunged into Warburton's soul; and had he been an officer of the law, he knew that he would have utterly disregarded his duty.

"I am not a secret service man, sir," he replied unevenly. "If I were,"--pointing to the grate, "your plans would not have fed the fire."

"Who are you, then, and what do you in my house in this guise?"--proudly.

"I am your head stable-man--for the present. It was all by chance. I came into this room yesterday to get a book on veterinary surgery. I accidentally saw a plan. I have been a soldier. I knew that such a thing had no rightful place in this house.... I was coming across the lawn, when I looked into the window. ... It is not for me to judge you, sir. My duty lay in destroying those plans before they harmed any one."

"No, it is not for you to judge me," said the colonel. "I have gambled away my daughter's fortune. To keep her in ignorance of the fact and to return to her the amount I had wrongfully used, I consented to sell to Russia the coast fortification plans of my country, such as I could draw from memory. No, it is not for you to judge me; only God has the right to do that."

"I am only a groom," said Warburton, simply. "What I have heard I shall forget."

Ah, had he but looked at the girl's face then!

A change came over Karloff's countenance; his shoulders drooped; the melancholy fire died out of his face and eyes. With an air of resignation and a clear sense of the proportion of things, he reached out and took up the note upon which Annesley had scrawled his signature.

Warburton, always alert, seized the count's wrist. He saw the name of a bank and the sum of five figures.

"What is this?" he demanded.

"It is mine," replied the count, haughtily.

Warburton released him.

"He speaks truly," said the colonel. "It is his."

"The hour of madness is past," the Russian began, slowly and musically. The tone was musing. He seemed oblivious of his surroundings and that three pairs of curious eyes were leveled in his direction. He studied the note, creased it, drew it through his fingers, smoothed it and caressed it. "And I should have done exactly as I threatened. There is, then, a Providence which watches jealously over the innocent? And I was a skeptic!... Two hundred thousand dollars,"--picking up the packet of banknotes and balancing it on his hand. "Well, it is a sum large enough to tempt any man. How the plans and schemes of men crumble to the touch! Ambition is but the pursuit of mirages.... Mademoiselle, you will never know what the ignominy of this moment has cost me--nor how well I love you. I come of a race of men who pursue their heart's desire through fire and water. Obstacles are nothing; the end is everything. In Europe I should have won, in honor or in dishonor. But this American people, I do not quite understand them; and that is why I have played the villain to no purpose."

He paused, and a sad, bitter smile played over his face.

"Mademoiselle," he continued, "henceforth, wherever I may go, your face and the sound of your voice shall abide with me. I do not ask you to forget, but I ask you to forgive." Again he paused.

She uttered no sound.

"Well, one does not forget nor forgive these things in so short a time. And, after all, it was your own father's folly. Fate threw him across my path at a critical moment--but I had reckoned without you. Your father is a brave man, for he had the courage to offer himself to the law; I have the courage to give you up. I, too, am a soldier; I recognize the value of retreat." To Warburton he said: "A groom, a hostler, to upset such plans as these! I do not know who you are, sir, nor how to account for your timely and peculiar appearance. But I fully recognize the falseness of your presence here. Eh, well, this is what comes of race prejudice, the senseless battle which has always been and always will be waged between the noble and the peasant. Had I observed you at the proper time, our positions might relatively have been changed. Useless retrospection!" To Annesley: "Sir, we are equally culpable. Here is this note of yours. I might, as a small contribution toward righting the comparative wrong which I have done you, I might cast it into the fire. But between gentlemen, situated as we are, the act would be as useless as it would be impossible. I might destroy the note, but you would refuse to accept such generosity at my hands,--which is well."

"What you say is perfectly true." The colonel drew his daughter closer to him.

"So," went on the count, putting the note in his pocket, "to-morrow I shall have my ducats."

"My bank will discount the note," said the colonel, with a proud look; "my indebtedness shall be paid in full."

"As I have not the slightest doubt. Mademoiselle, fortune ignores you but temporarily; misfortune has brushed only the hem of your garment, as it were. Do not let the fear of poverty alarm you,"--lightly. "I prophesy a great public future for you. And when you play that _Largo_ of Handel's, to a breathless audience, who knows that I may not be hidden behind the curtain of some stall, drinking in the heavenly sound made by that loving bow?.... Romance enters every human being's life; like love and hate, it is primitive. But to every book fate writes _finis_."

He thrust the bank-notes carelessly into his coat pocket, and walked slowly toward the hallway. At the threshold he stopped and looked back. The girl could not resist the magnetism of his dark eyes. She was momentarily fascinated, and her heart beat painfully.

"If only I might go with the memory of your forgiveness," he said.

"I forgive you."

"Thank you." Then Karloff resolutely proceeded; the portiere fell behind him. Shortly after she heard the sound of closing doors, the rattle of a carriage, and then all became still. Thus the handsome barbarian passed from the scene.

The colonel resumed his chair, his arm propped on a knee and his head bowed in his hand. Quickly the girl fell to her knees, hid her face on his breast, and regardless of the groom's presence, silently wept.

"My poor child!" faltered the colonel. "God could not have intended to give you so wretched a father. Poverty and dishonor, poverty and dishonor; I who love you so well have brought you these!"

Warburton, biting his trembling lips, tiptoed cautiously to the window, opened it and stepped outside. He raised his fevered face gratefully to the icy rain. A great and noble plan had come to him.

As Mrs. Chadwick said, love is magnificent only when it gives all without question.

XXIV

A FINE LOVER

Karloff remained in seclusion till the following Tuesday; after that day he was seen no more in Washington. From time to time some news of him filters through the diplomatic circles of half a dozen capitals to Washington. The latest I heard of him, he was at Port Arthur. It was evident that Russia valued his personal address too highly to exile him because of his failure in Washington. Had he threatened or gone about noisily, we should all have forgotten him completely. As it is, the memory of him to-day is as vivid as his actual presence. Thus, I give him what dramatists call an agreeable exit.

I was in the Baltimore and Potomac station the morning after that unforgetable night at Senator Blank's house. I had gone there to see about the departure of night trains, preparatory to making a flying trip to New York, and was leaving the station when a gloved hand touched me on the arm. The hand belonged to Mrs. Chadwick. She was dressed in the conventional traveling gray, and but for the dark lines under her eyes she would have made a picture for any man to admire. She looked tired, very tired, as women look who have not slept well.

"Good morning, Mr. Orator," she said, saluting me with a smile.

"You are going away?" I asked, shaking her hand cordially.

"'Way, 'way, away! I am leaving for Nice, where I expect to spend the winter. I had intended to remain in Washington till the holidays; but I plead guilty to a roving disposition, and I frequently change my mind."

"Woman's most charming prerogative," said I, gallantly.

What a mask the human countenance is! How little I dreamed that I was jesting with a woman whose heart was breaking, and numbed with a terrible pain!

Her maid came up to announce that everything was ready for her reception in the state-room, and that the train was about to draw out of the station. Mrs. Chadwick and I bade each other good-by. Two years passed before I saw her again.

At eleven o'clock I returned to my rooms to pack a case and have the thing off my mind. Tramping restlessly up and down before my bachelor apartment house I discerned M'sieu Zhames. His face was pale and troubled, but the angle of his jaw told me that he had determined upon something or other.

"Ha!" I said railingly. He wore a decently respectable suit of ready-made clothes. "Lost your job and want me to give you a recommendation?"

"I want a few words with you, Chuck, and no fooling. Don't say that you can't spare the time. You've simply _got_ to."

"With whom am I to talk, James, the groom, or Warburton, the gentleman?"

"You are to talk with the man whose sister you are to marry."

I became curious, naturally. "No police affair?"

"No, it's not the police. I can very well go to a lawyer, but I desire absolute secrecy. Let us go up to your rooms at once."

I led the way. I was beginning to desire to know what all this meant.

"Has anybody recognized you?" I asked, unlocking the door to my apartment.

"No; and I shouldn't care a hang if they had."

"Oho!"

Warburton flung himself into a chair and lighted a cigar. He puffed it rapidly, while I got together my shaving and toilet sets.

"Start her up," said I.

"Chuck, when my father died he left nearly a quarter of a million in five per cents; that is to say, Jack, Nancy and I were given a yearly income of about forty-five hundred. Nancy's portion and mine are still in bonds which do not mature till 1900. Jack has made several bad investments, and about half of his is gone; but his wife has plenty, so his losses do not trouble him. Now, I have been rather frugal during the past seven years. I have lived entirely upon my Army pay. I must have something like twenty-five thousand lying in the bank in New York. On Monday, between three and four o'clock, Colonel Annesley will become practically a beggar, a pauper."

"What?" My shaving-mug slipped from my hand and crashed to the floor, where it lay in a hundred pieces.

"Yes. He and his daughter will not have a roof of their own: all gone, every stick and stone. Don't ask me any questions; only do as I ask of you." He took out his check-book and filled out two blanks. These he handed to me. "The large one I want you to place in the Union bank, to the credit of Colonel Annesley."

I looked at the check. "Twenty thousand dollars?" I gasped.

"The Union bank has this day discounted the colonel's note. It falls due on Monday. In order to meet it, he will have to sell what is left of the Virginian estate and his fine horses. The interest will be inconsiderable."

"What--" I began, but he interrupted me.

"I shall not answer a single question. The check for three thousand is for the purchase of the horses, which will be put on sale Saturday morning. They are easily worth this amount. Through whatever agency you please, buy these horses for me, but not in my name. As for the note, cash my check first and present the currency for the note. No one will know anything about it then. You can not trace money."

"Good Lord, Bob, you are crazy! You are giving away a fortune," I remonstrated.

"It is my own, and my capital remains untouched."

"Have you told her that you love her? Does she know who you are?" I was very much excited.

"No,"--sadly, "I haven't told her that I love her. She does not know who I am. What is more, I never want her to know. I have thrown my arms roughly around her, thinking her to be Nancy, and have kissed her. Some reparation is due her. On Monday I shall pack up quietly and return to the West"

"Annesley beggared? What in heaven's name does this all mean?" I was confounded.

"Some day, Chuck, when you have entered the family properly as my sister's husband, perhaps I may confide in you. At present the secret isn't mine. Let it suffice that through peculiar circumstances, the father of the girl I love is ruined. I am not doing this for any theatrical play, gratitude and all that rot,"--with half a smile, "I admire and respect Colonel Annesley; I love his daughter, hopelessly enough. I have never been of much use to any one. Other persons' troubles never worried me to any extent; I was happy-go-lucky, careless and thoughtless. True, I never passed a beggar without dropping a coin into his cup. But often this act was the result of a good dinner and a special vintage. The twenty thousand will keep the colonel's home, the house his child was born in and her mother before her. I am doing this crazy thing, as you call it, because it is going to make me rather happy. I shall disappear Monday. They may or they may not suspect who has come to their aid. They may even trace the thing to you; but you will be honor-bound to reveal nothing. When you have taken up the note, mail it to Annesley. You will find Count Karloff's name on it."

"Karloff?" I was in utter darkness.

"Yes. Annesley borrowed twenty thousand of him on a three months' note. Both men are well known at the Union bank, Karloff having a temporary large deposit there, and Annesley always having done his banking at the same place. Karloff, for reasons which I can not tell you, did not turn in the note till this morning. You will take it up this afternoon."

"Annesley, whom I believed to be a millionaire, penniless; Karloff one of his creditors? Bob, I do not think that you are treating me fairly. I can't go into this thing blind."

"If you will not do it under these conditions, I shall have to find some one who will,"--resolutely.

I looked at the checks and then at him.... Twenty-three thousand dollars! It was more than I ever before held in my hand at one time. And he was giving it away as carelessly as I should have given away a dime. Then the bigness of the act, the absolute disinterestedness of it, came to me suddenly.

"Bob, you are the finest lover in all the world! And if Miss Annesley ever knows who you are, she isn't a woman if she does not fall immediately in love with you." I slapped him on the shoulder. I was something of a lover myself, and I could understand.

"She will never know. I don't want her to know. That is why I am going away. I want to do a good deed, and be left in the dark to enjoy it. That is all. After doing this, I could never look her in the eyes as Robert Warburton. I shall dine with the folks on Sunday. I shall confess all only to Nancy, who has always been the only confidante I have ever had among the women."

There was a pause. I could bring no words to my lips. Finally I stammered out: "Nancy knows. I told her everything last night. I broke my word with you, Bob, but I could not help it She was crying again over what she thinks to be your heartlessness. I _had_ to tell her."

"What did she say?"--rising abruptly.

"She laughed, and I do not know when I have seen her look so happy. There'll be a double wedding yet, my boy." I was full of enthusiasm.

"I wish I could believe you, Chuck; I wish I could. I'm rather glad you told Nan. I love her, and I don't want her to worry about me." He gripped my hand. "You will do just as I ask?"

"To the very letter. Will you have a little Scotch to perk you up a bit? You look rather seedy."

"No,"--smiling dryly. "If she smelt liquor on my breath I should lose my position. Good-by, then, till Sunday."

I did not go to New York that night. I forgot all about going. Instead, I went to Nancy, to whom I still go whenever I am in trouble or in doubt.

XXV

A FINE HEROINE, TOO

Friday morning.

Miss Annesley possessed more than the ordinary amount of force and power of will. Though the knowledge of it was not patent to her, she was a philosopher. She always submitted gracefully to the inevitable. She was religious, too, feeling assured that God would provide. She did not go about the house, moaning and weeping; she simply studied all sides of the calamity, and looked around to see what could be saved. There were moments when she was even cheerful. There were no new lines in her face; her eyes were bright and eager. All persons of genuine talent look the world confidently in the face; they know exactly what they can accomplish. As Karloff had advised her, she did not trouble herself about the future. Her violin would support her and her father, perhaps in comfortable circumstances. The knowledge of this gave her a silent happiness, that kind which leaves upon the face a serene and beautiful calm.

At this moment she stood on the veranda, her hand shading her eyes. She was studying the sky. The afternoon would be clear; the last ride should be a memorable one. The last ride! Tears blurred her eyes and there was a smothering sensation in her throat. The last ride! After to-day Jane would have a new, strange mistress. If only she might go to this possible mistress and tell her how much she loved the animal, to obtain from her the promise that she would be kind to it always. How mysteriously the human heart spreads its tendrils around the objects of its love! What is there in the loving of a dog or a horse that, losing one or the other, an emptiness is created? Perhaps it is because the heart goes out wholly without distrust to the faithful, to the undeceiving, to the dumb but loving beast, which, for all its strength, is so helpless.

She dropped her hand and spoke to James, who was waiting near by for her orders.

"James, you will have Pierre fill a saddle-hamper; two plates, two knives and forks, and so forth. We shall ride in the north country this afternoon. It will be your last ride. To-morrow the horses will be sold." How bravely she said it!

"Yes, Miss Annesley." Whom were they going to meet in the north country? "At what hour shall I bring the horses around?"

"At three."