← catalogue

A Modern Mercenary

by K. Prichard · English · Gutenberg #28167 · 407,764 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Modern Mercenary
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: A Modern Mercenary

Author: K. Prichard
        H. Hesketh-Prichard


        
Release date: February 24, 2009 [eBook #28167]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28167

Credits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN MERCENARY ***


E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Graeme Mackreth, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original illustration.
      See 28167-h.htm or 28167-h.zip:
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/1/0/28167/28167-h/28167-h.htm)
      or
      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/8/1/0/28167/28167-h.zip)





A MODERN MERCENARY

by

K. AND HESKETH PRICHARD

[E. AND H. HERON]







New York Doubleday, Page & Co. 1902

Copyright, 1899, by
Doubleday & McClure Co.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                             PAGE

     I. A LIEUTENANT OF FRONTIER CAVALRY               1

    II. A GENTLEMAN OF THE GUARD                      14

   III. THE GENTLEMEN OF THE GUARD                    28

    IV. DANGER SIGNALS                                41

     V. GOOD LUCK AND A FIREFLY                       48

    VI. THE CLOISTER OF ST. ANTHONY                   62

   VII. ONE WOMAN'S DIPLOMACY                         79

  VIII. A QUESTION OF THE GUARD                       94

    IX. THE CASTLE OF SAGAN                          106

     X. COUNT SIMON OF SAGAN                         120

    XI. A COUNSEL OF EXPEDIENCY                      130

   XII. ANTHONY UNZIAR                               136

  XIII. LOVE IN TWO SHADES                           144

   XIV. HALF A PROMISE                               153

    XV. COLENDORP                                    159

   XVI. 'WITH YOUR LIPS TO THE HURT'                 170

  XVII. IRIS                                         177

 XVIII. THE SWORD OF UNZIAR                          186

   XIX. IN DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS                      195

    XX. UNDER THE PINES                              202

   XXI. LOVE'S BEGGAR                                210

  XXII. IN LOVE WITH HONOUR                          222

 XXIII. HOW RALLYWOOD HAD HIS ORDERS                 233

  XXIV. ON THE FRONTIER                              239

   XXV. A QUESTION OF TWO MORALITIES                 246

  XXVI. LOVE'S HANDICAP                              258

 XXVII. THE MAN OF THE HOUR                          267

XXVIII. THE ARREST                                   277

  XXIX. THE COURT-MARTIAL                            282

   XXX. 'UPON THE GREAT WORLD'S ALTAR-STAIRS'        292

  XXXI. DUKE GUSTAVE                                 300

 XXXII. FOR A SEASON                                 307




A MODERN MERCENARY




CHAPTER I.

A LIEUTENANT OF FRONTIER CAVALRY.


During four months of the year the independent State of Maäsau,' we will
call it--which is not very noticeable even on the largest sized map of
Europe--is tormented by a dry and weary north-east wind. And nowhere is
its influence more unpleasantly felt than in the capital, Révonde, which
stands shoulder-on to the hustling gales, its stately frontages and
noble quays stretching out westwards along the shores of the Kofn almost
to where the yellow waters of the river spread fan-wise into a
grey-green sea.

The _tsa_ was blowing strongly on a certain November afternoon, eddying
and whistling about the wide spaces of the Grand Square as John
Rallywood, a tall figure in a military cloak, turned the corner of a
side street and met its full blast. He faced it for some yards along the
empty pavements, then ran up the steps of his club. A few minutes later
he passed through a lofty corridor and entered a door over which is set
a quaint invitation to smokers, which may not be written down here, for
it is the jealously guarded copyright of the club.

It chanced that the room for the moment had but one occupant, who sat in
a roomy armchair by the white stove. This gentleman did not raise his
head, but continued to gaze thoughtfully at his well shaped though
square and comfortable boots.

Rallywood paused almost imperceptibly in his stride.

'Hullo, Major! Glad to see you,' he said, as he dropped into an armchair
opposite.

Major Counsellor stood up with his back to the stove, thereby giving a
view of a red, challenging face, heavy eyebrows, and a huge white droop
of moustache. He looked down at Rallywood consideringly before he spoke.
'So you're here. I imagined they kept you pretty closely on the
frontier. The world been kicking you?'

Rallywood laughed.

'No, but it would do me good to kick the world,' he answered as he
helped himself from the Major's cigar case. 'Five years, almost six,
spent on the frontier, with nothing to show for it, isn't good enough.
I've come up to send in my papers.'

'Then you'll be a fool,' returned the Major with decision.

Rallywood was busy lighting his cigar; when that was arranged to his
satisfaction he said easily--

'Just so. History repeats itself.'

Counsellor stood squarely upright with his hands behind him.

'Any other reasons?' he asked.

'Plenty.'

'Pity! Are they serious or--otherwise?'

Rallywood pulled his moustache.

'Why is it a pity?' he asked slowly.

'Because there is going to be trouble here, and with trouble comes a
chance.'

Rallywood smoked on in silence. He was a big, shallow-flanked man with
the marks of the world upon him, and that indescribable air which comes
to one who has passed a good portion of his time in laughing at the
arbitrary handicaps arranged by Fate in the race of life.

'Where do you propose to go?' asked Counsellor after an interval.

'Back to Africa, I think--Buluwayo, Johannesburg, anywhere. South
Africa's still in the bud, you see.'

'Yes, but it is a biggish bud and will take time to blow. You can afford
to wait and--it may be worth your while.'

Rallywood threw a swift glance at Counsellor's inscrutable face.

'Seven years ago,' he said in a deliberate manner, 'you told me it was
worth while, but life has not grown more interesting since then.'

'Ah!' Counsellor paused, then went on with a grim smile, 'At your age,
John, there are possibilities. Think over it. After hanging on here for
more than five years why lose your chance now? Look at those fellows.'
He pointed out into the square.

Rallywood rose lazily and gazed out also. The prospect was not cheering.
A few troopers, their cloaks flapping in the wind, were galloping across
the square on the way to relieve guard at the Palace, and under the
statue of the late Grand Duke on horseback three men in tall hats stood
talking together; then they turned and walked towards the club.

'Know them?' asked Counsellor.

Rallywood shook his head.

'The man with the beard is Stokes of the 'Times:' next him is Bradley;
he's on another big daily. Their being here speaks for itself. Maäsau is
going to take up people's attention shortly. The Grand Duke is in a
tight place, and there will be a flare-up sooner or later.'

'And you advise me to stop and see it through?' said Rallywood
meditatively from the window; then he lounged back to his chair. 'How
will it end?'

Counsellor shook the ash from his cigar.

'Selpdorf is the man of the hour,' he said.

On the autumn evening when these two men were talking at the club the
Duchy of Maäsau was, in the opinion of Maäsaun patriots, going as fast
as it could to the devil. With them, it may be added, the devil was
personified and bore the name of a neighbouring nation. The one person
who ignored this fact was the Grand Duke. With an inset, stubborn pride
he believed that his country must remain for ever, as the long centuries
had known her, Maäsau the Free. This being the case, he felt himself at
liberty to spend his time in cursing the fate that had refused blue seas
and skies to wintry Révonde, thus depriving it of these sources of
revenue which depend upon climate, and which are enjoyed by places far
less naturally beautiful than the capital of Maäsau.

The Duke, prematurely aged, by the manner of his life, made it his chief
business to devise schemes for raising money whereby he might carry on
the staling pleasures of his youth. Beyond this the administration of
public affairs was left entirely in the supple hands of the Chancellor,
M. Selpdorf, while the Duke, with those who surrounded him, plunged into
the newest excitement of the hour, for who knew what a day might bring
forth? The Court was like a stage lit by lurid light, on which the
actors laughed and loved, danced and fought to the music of a wild
finale, that whirled and maddened before the crash of the coming end.

Once upon a time Maäsau was accounted of no particular importance or
value amongst its bigger neighbours; but of late, for various reasons,
its fortunes had become the subject of attention and discussion in at
least three foreign chancelleries, where old maps were being looked up
and new ones bought and painted different colours, according as seemed
most desirable by the bearded men, who sat in council to apportion the
marsh, rock, dune, and forest of which the now absorbingly interesting
pigmy State was composed.

In fact, Maäsau, with its twenty miles or so of seaboard, containing one
excellent port _in esse_ and two others _in posse_, had become a
Naboth's vineyard to a country almost land-bound and yet dreaming of the
supremacy of the four seas. On this ambition and its possible
consequences the other Great Powers looked, to speak diplomatically,
with coldness.

It was generally understood that the English Foreign Office desired the
maintenance of the _status quo_; France was supposed to be ready to clap
a young republic on the back and to accord it her protection, while
Russia played her own dumb and blinding game, of which none could
definitely pronounce the issue. The political world thus stood at gaze,
watching every change and prepared to take advantage of any chance that
offered. The honours of the game so far had lain with M. Selpdorf, who
scored each trick with the same bland smile. Whenever the Treasury of
Maäsau was at a low ebb Selpdorf usually had a thirteenth card to lay
upon the table, and as the nations cautiously proceeded to frustrate
each other's purposes royal remittances from Heaven knows where flowed
in abundantly to replenish the bankrupt exchequer of the State.

When Major Counsellor expressed his emphatic disapproval of the
intended resignation of Rallywood a new development was in the air.
Hitherto the lead had mostly devolved upon Selpdorf; on this occasion he
was known to be hanging back, and the question of who would take the
initiative was the question of the day. The fact that Germany had lately
accredited a new representative, a certain Baron von Elmur, to the Court
of Maäsau,--an able man whose reputation rested mainly on the successful
performance of missions of a delicate nature,--added to the tension of
the moment.

'So you say they are getting up steam in Maäsau?' said Rallywood again.
'I have been out in the wilds for the last six months, and don't know so
much about events as I might.'

'Steam?' growled Counsellor. 'Steam enough to wreck Europe! I almost
wish I'd never godfathered you into this blessed little stoke-hole. Why
the deuce didn't you enlist at home instead of coming here?'

'That was out of the question, of course.'

'Why? Isn't our army good enough for you to fight in?'

'If it was only that!--I could fight in the ranks, God knows, but I
couldn't parade in them! Besides, the life here suited me--then.'

'What's gone wrong with it now? I should have thought you would have got
used to it by this time,' observed Counsellor with the air of the older
man. It was not the first occasion on which he had played the part of
elderly relative towards Rallywood during the course of their queer,
rough-grained friendship--a friendship of a type which exists only
between man and man, and even then is sufficiently rare.

'Precisely, I'm too infernally used to it! It was not half bad as long
as the newness lasted, but I can't stand it any longer! I'm sick of the
monotony. Do you know old Fitzadams's criticism on the service here?
"Dust and drill, drill and dust, and fill in the chinks with homicidal
manoeuvres."'

'Maäsau only apes its betters. These Continental armies devote
themselves very assiduously to rehearsals, and there is no end of waste
about the process,' remarked Counsellor. 'They rehearse in summer and
get sunstroke; then they rehearse in winter with rheumatisms and lung
troubles growing on every bush. The bill for blank cartridges alone is
enormous! And all because they have no India and no Africa, as we have,
where we can give our fellows a taste of the real thing any day in the
week. We carry on a small war with a regiment, or despatch a youngster
with half a company to teach manners and honesty to twenty thousand
niggers. The peculiarity of our army is that it is always at war. In
this way we escape the dangers of theory, and get practice with
something for our money into the bargain.'

'Our plan has its advantages,' agreed Rallywood lazily. 'I saw in South
Africa what a little active service does for a man. The first time he
is under fire he is persuaded that he is going to be killed, and that
every shot must hit him. But after a trial or two he begins to think the
odds are in his favour and he becomes a much more effective fighting
machine.'

'Necessarily he does. We don't half realise the value of our colonies
yet--as a training ground for our soldiers. The British army is the
smallest in Europe, but it remains to be seen what account it will give
of itself if it is ever brought into contact with these huge,
peace-trained conscript monsters.'

'When the Duke dies----' began Rallywood, harking back to the former
topic of conversation.

The door was softly opened, and a waiter advanced into the room, bearing
a letter for Rallywood, who took it and laid it down on the table beside
him, then looked at Counsellor for an answer to his half spoken
question. Counsellor shrugged his shoulders.

'Who can tell?' he replied. 'Meanwhile take the gifts the gods have sent
you to-day,' and he pointed to the long, heavily sealed envelope that
lay at Rallywood's elbow. 'Selpdorf, I see, already has his finger upon
you.'

Rallywood broke the great seals, and, having read, he tossed the paper
into the other's hands.

'He wishes to see me at 9.30. What can he want with me?' he asked.

'Probably he has heard you intend to cut the service. It appears to me,
Rallywood, that your chance has come out to meet you.'

'How could he have heard that I meant to go? And what can it matter to
any one if I do?' went on Rallywood incredulously.

Counsellor shook his head, but made no other reply.

'A lieutenant of the Frontier Cavalry,' resumed Rallywood, 'is merely a
superior make of excise officer!'

'You will be something more or something else before 10, I expect. As
for what he wants with you, that is for you to find out--if you can.'

'It is to be hoped he may feel moved to let me have my arrears of pay,'
said Rallywood, relapsing into his usual tone of indifference; 'that is
the chief consideration with us on the frontier just now.'

'He probably will if it suits him--or rather perhaps if you suit him.
Come over and dine with me presently at the Continental. There's
generally a decent dinner to be had there.'

John Rallywood, one of the old Lincolnshire Rallywoods, had been born to
a fortune, and moreover with an immense capacity for enjoying it after a
wholesome fashion. Queens Fain had fallen to him while still an infant
upon the death of a great-uncle, and with the old place were connected
all those hundred untranslatable ties and associations which go to make
up a boy's dreams. He was a man of suppressed, perhaps half unconscious,
but nevertheless deep-rooted enthusiasms; hence when the blow fell
which deprived him not only of his inheritance, but also cut short the
life of his mother, the unexpected, almost intolerable anguish he
silently endured had left a deep, defacing scar upon his personality.

Up to twenty-two the record of his life, if not striking, had been clean
and manly. He had passed through Sandhurst, and joined a dragoon
regiment for something over a year, when an older branch of the family,
supposed for a quarter of a century to be extinct, suddenly presented
itself very much alive in the person of a middle-aged, middle-class
American. Within three months the man's claim was substantiated, and
estate, fortune, position, and home--as far as John Rallywood was
concerned--had melted into thin air.

During this period of disruption and trouble Counsellor, who happened to
be distantly connected with him, came into his life. They did not meet
very often and spoke little when together, but mutual knowledge and
liking resulted. Friendship is a living thing: it cannot be made; it
grows.

Rallywood, when he turned to seek the means of a livelihood, found
himself, as he said long afterwards, standing in the corridor of life
with all the doors shut and no key to open them.

His tastes and training alike led in the direction of a military career,
and presently he went out to the Cape, where he spent a year or two in a
police force which was in time disbanded, and he returned to England
once more at a loose end.

At this juncture Major Counsellor suggested to him the possibility of
obtaining a commission in the little army of the Duchy of Maäsau. This
hint set him on the right track. The regiments of Maäsau, though few in
number, carried splendid traditions. Their ranks were drawn from a
stolid, silent peasantry, and officered by a wire-strung, high tempered
aristocracy, born of a mixed race, it is true, but none the less
frantically devoted to the freedom and independence of their shred of a
fatherland.

In compliance with a private request on the part of Major Counsellor the
British Minister at Révonde bestirred himself to procure a commission
for Rallywood, who thus became a lieutenant in the Frontier Cavalry, and
for more than five years had taken his share in riding and keeping the
marches of Maäsau gaining much experience in capturing smugglers and in
superintending the digging out of snowed up trains. But life on the
frontier, though crammed with physical activity and routine work, was in
every other respect monotonously empty, and breaks in the shape of
furlough were few and far between. Half liked, wholly respected, and a
little feared amongst his comrades, but always remaining a lieutenant to
whom now, the State owed eighteen months' arrears of pay, Rallywood, in
return, owed to Maäsau only the qualified service of an unpaid man, but
gave it the full devotion of a capable officer.

As to Counsellor, no one could quite account for his presence at Révonde
at the present moment. He was supposed to be attached in some indefinite
way to the Legation, but he described himself as a bird of passage,
whose appearance in the European capital simply meant whim or pleasure,
for he was growing old and lazy and could not be brought to account for
his wanderings, which he assured those who ventured to enquire were
chiefly undertaken in search of health. Nevertheless wherever he went or
came something interesting in a political sense--and more often than
not, in favour of British interests--was almost sure to happen.

In former days he had filled the position of military attaché to two or
three of the more important embassies, and was said to be the best known
man in Europe. He had, moreover, the right to carry upon his breast the
ribbon and decoration of more than one exclusive and distinguished
Order. Of the many rumours associated with him this saying was certainly
true: that one could never enter the smoking-room of any diplomatic club
in any city in Europe without standing a fair chance of encountering
Major Counsellor warming himself beside the stove.

Therefore he had naturally an enormous circle of acquaintance, each
individual knowing very little about him, though he always formed an
interesting subject of conversation, and a political opinion backed by
his name became at once important.




CHAPTER II.

A GENTLEMAN OF THE GUARD.


Shortly before 9.30 Rallywood presented himself at the granite palace,
with its four cupolas, which M. Selpdorf occupied in his capacity of
First Minister of State. After some slight delay he was ushered into a
comfortable study, where he found Selpdorf with a reading-lamp at his
elbow, glancing rapidly through a mass of papers that he threw one after
another, with apparent carelessness, on the floor beside him.

The chancellor of a small State might very well have been pardoned had
he introduced a certain amount of what an old official used to call
'desk dignity' into his dealings with those who approached him, but
Selpdorf habitually affected an easy manner and an easy chair. He was a
middle-sized man, possessed of a very round head, bald at the crown, but
having still a lock of dark hair on the summit of his round forehead;
very round eyes set far back in smooth holes, showing little lid; a nose
blunt and thick over lips that might have been coarse, but were
controlled, and betrayed a lurking humour at the corners, to which the
upstanding moustaches seemed to add point. For all his peculiarity of
aspect, he was a man who left an impression on the memory of something
pleasing and attractive, especially in the minds of women.

He received Rallywood with that air of deep personal interest which told
with such happy effect on those whom he desired to influence.

'Ah, my dear Lieutenant, I understood you were in Révonde, and took the
advantage of your presence to put into effect a little plan which has
been for some time in contemplation. I recollect having had the pleasure
of meeting you not so long ago when you arrived in Maäsau.'

'Nearly six years ago, your Excellency,' replied Rallywood with a smile.

'I can scarcely believe it to be so long. At any rate I remember
perfectly that I had the honour of presenting you to his Highness as the
latest addition to our Frontier Cavalry.'

'Your Excellency might easily have forgotten. From the nature of the
case that could not be possible with me.'

Selpdorf listened with a little astonishment. This Englishman was not
quite such a fool as one might have expected from the fact of his having
been content to remain without preferment and only a proportion of his
pay for over five years on the frontier. He had hoped to find the fellow
adaptable, but this long-limbed, slow-spoken gentleman was not
altogether so transparent an individuality as Selpdorf had led himself
to expect.

'But why have you secluded yourself for so long among those barbarous
marshes and forests?' demanded the Chancellor in a rallying manner. The
young man made no reply, though the obvious one was in his mind.

'By-the-by,' resumed the Chancellor, as if struck by a new thought, 'I
have heard that your countryman Major Counsellor has come to pay us a
little visit in Maäsau.'

'He is here. I have just seen him,' replied Rallywood.

Selpdorf's round eyes glanced once more at his companion. The simple
directness of the reply was admirable but baffling.

'Ah, he is invaluable, the good Major, quite invaluable! England may
well be proud of him. He is one of the ablest men in Europe,
besides'--here he smiled, showing a row of strong, even teeth--'besides
being one of the most honest. For a diplomatist--what praise!'

Rallywood met his glance imperturbably.

'For a diplomatist, your Excellency?' he repeated.

'But assuredly,' replied the Chancellor warmly: 'figure to yourself, my
friend, the condition of politics if all statesmen were like
him--honest! An invaluable man!'

He paused for a reply, but Rallywood merely bowed. He felt that so much
at least was expected of him on the part of England.

'But now, monsieur, with regard to your own affair. You have been five
years in the service of his Highness. And your command?'

'At present fifty troopers at the block-houses above Kofn Ford and along
the river. In the winter, during the long dark nights, when there are
many attempts to run illicit goods across the frontier, I shall have,
perhaps, a score or so more.'

'And you are not tired of it?' M. Selpdorf raised his hands.

'So tired, your Excellency, that I am half inclined to let a better man
step into my shoes.'

'But come, come, that is impossible!' returned his Excellency agreeably.
'Are you also tired of our capital, of Révonde?'

'I have had very little opportunity of growing tired of Révonde. I know
nothing of it.'

'But you would prefer Révonde, believe me.'

At this moment an attendant appeared with a card upon a salver. Selpdorf
read the name with the faintest contraction of his brows.

'You will excuse me, M. Rallywood,' he said; 'I must ask you to wait in
the ante-room for a few minutes.'

The ante-room was a long pillared corridor, in which Rallywood found
himself quite alone. He fell at once into speculations as to the meaning
and aim of Selpdorf's late awakened interest in himself. Also the
allusions to Counsellor had probably been made with calculated
intention.

Rallywood understood that each of these two men had the same end in
view; each desired to dissemble his own character. And each of them
succeeded with the many, but failed as between themselves. Selpdorf
posed as the suave, sympathetic, good-natured friend of those with whom
he came in contact; Counsellor, as a man of no account, a rugged
soldier, honest, strong, outspoken, a good agent to act under the
direction of more astute brains, but if left to his own resources
somewhat blunt and blundering.

To do Rallywood justice, he was far more occupied with this last thought
than with the things which bore more directly on his own prospects and
future. At this period his life was comparatively tasteless and void of
interest; there was nothing to look forward to, and the recent past
meant extremes of heat and cold, long solitary rounds ridden by night,
and days rendered so far alike by iron-handed rule and method that one
was driven to mark the lapse of time by the seasons, not by the ordinary
divisions of weeks and months.

As he lounged in a chair full of these thoughts a slight rustle, soft
and silken, like the rustle of a woman's dress, caught his ear. He
turned his head quickly. The corridor with its splendid pillars, which
stood at long intervals, was steeped in the clear electric light, and
from where he sat he could see that there was no person visible
throughout its entire length.

Then as his gaze travelled back it rested on something which had
certainly not been lying where he now saw it at the time of his
entrance.

Not six paces behind him, stretched across the dark carpeting, in the
very centre of the pillared vista, lay a woman's long glove.

A woman's glove possesses a peculiar charm for all men. Perhaps it
suggests some of the sweet mystery of womanhood. The first action of
most young men in Rallywood's place would have been to raise it at once
and to examine it, as though in some impalpable manner it could tell
something of its unknown wearer, who might turn out to be the Hathor,
the one woman in the world.

But the circumstances of Rallywood's life, and perhaps also some
exclusive element in his character, had heretofore set him rather apart
from the influence of women. He had grown to regard them without
curiosity, which is the last stage indifference can reach.

It must be admitted that it was with a feeling akin to repugnance that
he at last lifted the long, soft, pale-hued, faintly-scented _suède_
from the floor and dangled it at an unnecessary distance from his eyes,
holding it as he did so daintily between finger and thumb. Its subtle
appeal to his senses as a man failed to reach him. It simply aroused an
old feeling of reserve toward the sex it represented. His face altered
slightly and he dropped it suddenly with an odd repulsion, as he might
have dropped a snake, on a couch near by.

Then he resumed his chair and turned his back upon it, till the
reflection that the woman to whom it belonged must have come and gone
while he sat thinking with his back to the corridor sent him wheeling
round again.

The glove still lay where he had placed it on the edge of the couch,
palm upwards and with a suggestion of helplessness and pleading. It
annoyed him unreasonably. He frowned and looked at his watch. Half an
hour had passed since Selpdorf dismissed him.

At that moment a guttural voice broke the silence of the house, and the
heavy curtain over the door at the nearer end of the ante-room was
thrust back by a brusque hand, and a tall, high-shouldered, handsome
man, dressed as if he were about to attend some Court function, stood in
the opening. Behind him Rallywood caught sight of a flurried and
explanatory lackey.

'Ah! so I have lost my way after all,' said this personage in a bland
voice. 'A mistake! But I hope you will accord me your forgiveness,
mademoiselle?'

Rallywood sprang to his feet at this most unexpected ending and looked
round.

Close beside him stood a tall girl wrapped in a long cloak of fur and
amber velvet. She was singularly beautiful, with a pale, clear-hued
beauty. Her black, long-lashed eyes were on him and they were full of
laughter.

'Enter, then, Baron,' said the girl, glancing across at the courtier.
'Did you guess you would find me here, or were you seeking monsieur?'
and she waved her bare left hand towards Rallywood.

'I lost my way, nothing more,' returned the Baron, coming forward; 'but
perhaps, as in my heart, all roads lead towards----' He bowed deeply
once more, this time stooping to kiss the girl's hand with a certain
show of restrained eagerness.

She drew back with a little impatient gesture.

'I should not have been here, but for an accident,' she replied coldly.
'In fact I was on the point of starting for his Highness's reception,
had not monsieur detained me.' And, to Rallywood's amazement, she
indicated himself.

Before he could speak she pointed to his spurred boot.

'Monsieur has set his heel on my poor glove,' she added.

By his hasty movement in rising he had apparently dislodged the glove
from its position on the edge of the couch. He stooped with a hurried
word of apology and picked it up. On the delicate palm was stamped the
curved stain of his boot-heel.

'Do you always treat a lady's glove so?' she asked gravely, and held out
her hand for it.

Rallywood looked down at her very deliberately, and something that was
neither his will nor his reason decided the next action. He folded the
soft _suède_ reverently together.

'No, mademoiselle,' he answered, as he placed it inside his tunic, 'I
have never before treated a lady's glove--so. For the accident, I offer
my deepest apologies.'

She watched him with raised eyebrows and a slight derisive smile. Then
she drew the companion glove from her right hand, and giving it to the
lackey, who still remained in the background, she said--

'Throw it away, it is useless, and tell Nanzelle to bring me another
pair.'

'Monsieur, with whom I have not yet the pleasure of being acquainted,'
interrupted the Baron rather suddenly, 'monsieur is after all the lucky
man. He retains what I dare not even ask for.'

'Shall I call back the servant with its fellow for you?' mademoiselle
asked haughtily. 'It is nothing to me who picks up what I have thrown
away.' With this rebuff to Rallywood she placed her hand upon the
German's, as if to ask him to lead her from the room, and added--

'You wish for an introduction? Then allow me to present you to each
other. His excellency the Baron von Elmur.' She paused, and her eyes
dwelt for a moment on Rallywood's. 'A gentleman of the Guard.' And
before Rallywood could explain the mistake the curtain had dropped
behind them and he was left standing alone.

In Baron von Elmur he recognized the oblique carriage of the head and
the high-shouldered figure of the third man he had seen with the
newspaper correspondents in the Grand Square that afternoon. Moreover he
knew that the German had entered the ante-room through no mistake, but
with some object in view. As for the girl, who was she and where had she
come from? She was not of Maäsau, since she had introduced him as
belonging to the Guard, for not only was every officer of that favoured
corps individually known, but it was further impossible for a Maäsaun to
make the slightest mistake with regard to any uniform. It was one of the
boasts of the country that even a child could tell at a glance not only
the special regiment, but the rank of the wearer of any uniform
belonging to the Duchy.

Rallywood had no time just then to pursue the subject further, as he was
almost immediately recalled to the Chancellor's presence.

'Now, monsieur,' began Selpdorf, as though no break had occurred in the
conversation, 'you are in truth tired of keeping our dreary marches; is
it not so?'

'There are better places--and worse, your Excellency.'

'Our gay little capital will be one of the better places, I promise
you,' continued the Chancellor. 'A position in the Guard of his Highness
has just become vacant. Am I right in believing that a nomination to
that superb regiment would tempt you to remain with us?'

Rallywood for once was a little taken aback.

'A gentleman of the Guard.' He repeated the girl's words of introduction
mechanically; then, putting aside the thought of her, he took up the
practical view of the situation and answered, 'I am an Englishman, your
Excellency, and though I have taken the soldier's oath to the Maäsaun
standard I have not taken the oath of nationality. I could not consent
to become a naturalised citizen even of the Duchy of Maäsau.'

'Ah, so?' Selpdorf stroked his chin, then despatching the objection with
a wave of his hand, he resumed, 'We must overlook that in your case. You
have already served the Duke for five years with as sincere zeal as the
truest Maäsaun amongst us. We must remember that and overlook a drawback
which is far less important than it seems.'

He turned to a memorandum on the table and consulted it.

'You were engaged in the affair at Xanthal, I see?'

'Three years ago, your Excellency,' replied Rallywood in a tone that
implied his powers of usefulness had probably become impaired by lapse
of time.

Selpdorf moved his shoulders. Here was a man throwing difficulties in
the way of his own advancement. Yet he could not possibly be so
indifferent to his own interests as he chose to assume.

'To be plain with you,' Selpdorf said with an air of candour, 'the
younger officers of the Guard have little experience. The latest fashion
in neckties or the most charming dancer at the Folie absorbs their
attention, to the exclusion of more important matters. There is, as you
doubtless know, a certain admixture of French blood in the veins of our
most noble families,' he finished abstractedly.

Rallywood had no remark to offer upon this. The officers of the Guard
bore a very distinct reputation. They were said to be a very pleasant
set of fellows socially, unless one ran foul of their prejudices, but
they were credited with a good many prejudices. As for his personal
acquaintance with them, it was limited to acting as second in a hastily
arranged duel fought out in the yard behind a little country railway
station.

'I should like to see a somewhat different spirit introduced, and to be
assured that I could always rely on the presence of at least one
cool-headed officer at the Palace. Your experience on the frontier has
eminently fitted you for the position. To you, therefore, will be
allotted the quarters reserved in the Palace itself for the adjutant of
the Guard. May I have the pleasure of saluting you as such?'

Rallywood hesitated. He foresaw certain difficulties, but they appeared
rather attractive than otherwise at the moment. He threw back his
shoulders, a light of laughter came into his eyes, he raised his head
and looked into Selpdorf's face.

'I thank your Excellency.'

The Chancellor understood more than met the ear. He approached the
subject delicately.

'Then you will allow me to congratulate you, Captain Rallywood,' he
said, bending forward to shake hands with his visitor in the English
fashion. 'There may possibly be some trifling difficulties at the
outset. The first step in any undertaking usually costs something, but
you will not, I beg, permit yourself to be drawn into,--ahem, any
shallow quarrels. Our friends of the Guard, you will understand, are a
little prone to pick up even a careless word on the sword-point.'

M. Selpdorf paused, and referred once more to the memorandum.

'There has been some small hitch about the pay on the frontier of late?'
he asked innocently.

'A serious hitch for the last eighteen months or so, your Excellency,'
replied Rallywood with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

'Indeed? That must be remedied. The paymaster-General shall have a note
upon your affair immediately, Captain Rallywood. Good-night.'

Rallywood stepped out into the windy, frozen night, and also out of his
old life into the new. Above him the stars, written in their vast, vague
characters upon the night-blue vault of sky, shone with a keen lustre.
Below his feet, with scarce a break in the great circle, it seemed as if
they drew together in denser clusters and set themselves in luminous
tiers. These latter were the lights of the city. For the Hôtel du
Chancelier stands high upon one of the twin ridges which form the ravine
of the river, and upon whose converging slopes Révonde is built.
Rallywood stood and looked down upon the dip and rise of the terraced
city with a new interest, for now it held a future for him individually,
a future which must be stirring and might be something more.

The eyes of the girl whose glove he had trodden upon still challenged
him from the starlit darkness, eyes made of starlit darkness themselves.
He followed the broad black line of the river between its sweeping
curves of lamps, broadening out seawards into hazy dimness. Then as a
great bell across the water boomed out the hour he turned his gaze to
the east, in the direction of the sound, to where the broken brightness
of the crowding streets gave place to a majestic alignment of light and
shadow, showing the position of the Ducal Palace upon the river bank.
Behind and above it shone a blood-red gleam like an angry eye; this
Rallywood knew to be the great stained dome of the historic mess-room of
the Guard.

Then the late lieutenant of the Frontier Cavalry laughed aloud in the
dark, his blood tingled in his veins, for the priceless element of a
vague, unknown danger and excitement had entered into his life.




CHAPTER III.

THE GENTLEMEN OF THE GUARD.


Members of great families frequently regard themselves as submerged
individualities. They wilfully sink all identity of their own in the
traditions handed down to them, and live as mere representatives of a
line which bears in common a noble name. This principle, which has
something to recommend it, was adopted long ago into the system of the
Guard of Maäsau, the officers of which were first gentlemen of the Guard
and afterwards men in the private and ordinary sense of the term. There
were eight of them--a colonel-in-chief, whose position became honorary
after his elevation to that rank; a colonel, upon whom devolved the
active command; a second in command, whose title of over-captain may be
translated major; three captains, and as many subalterns. And every
individual was drawn from the noblest blood of the country.

Thus it will be seen that Rallywood was about to enter the best company
in Révonde.

On a lofty cliff above the gorge from which the Kofn issues to curve
round the Palace gardens, and exposed to the four winds of heaven,
stands an imposing square block of grey buildings. These contain the
permanent quarters of the Guard. One whole side of the courtyard within
is taken up by the domed mess-room with its necessary adjuncts and
offices.

Here on the day following Rallywood's interview with Selpdorf, three men
lounged over their lunch. Any one of them, had he cared to take the
regimental rolls from their brass-bound coffer in the ante-room, could
have read his own name repeating itself down the columns as generation
after generation lived through its identical life in the same
surroundings, and died, most of them going to the devil with a fine
inherited pride and even gracefully.

Nearly every man who had crossed the page of the Maäsaun annals had
dined in that historic room, and each one of the men who now held the
right to dine there had a hereditary interest, and in many cases a
hereditary characteristic, to maintain. There was old walrus-faced
Wallenloup; thin, dark, reckless Colendorp; Adiron, whose great bulk
behind a cavalry sword was a sight for the gods, and so on; the three
lieutenants following closely in the footsteps of the three lieutenants
who had been before them; men who went to the rendezvous of a duel in
all comfort, affecting to be infinitely more afraid of catching cold
than of being killed; men who kissed the wife and dispatched the husband
with equal skill and as little noise as might be; men who were feared by
a rough, swaggering, raucous soldiery, whom they only knew through the
hard-faced sergeants; men, in fact, who lived out their debonair,
picturesquely evil lives to the satisfaction of themselves and of few
others.

On this occasion Colonel Wallenloup, the commandant, was not present. Of
him it was told that while still a lieutenant he had been offered, as a
reward for services rendered to the Crown, the command of any Maäsaun
regiment he might choose to select, and he had replied that he would
rather be a lieutenant of the Guard than a field-marshal elsewhere. And
so he remained to favour the mess with his somewhat blood-and-iron
jokes. The mess-room was a spacious hall, and though only three men sat
at table the place seemed full of life and colour from the black
polished flooring to the carved and vaulted ceiling, from which hung in
tattered folds the old banners of the regiment. Red hangings partially
draped the dark walls, and over all the light from the stained dome fell
in rich colour; while through the talk of the men ran the one weird
sound that never ceased about those walls, the whimpering of the wind.

Suddenly the door opened, and a young man, small and thin, with a faint
down upon his upper lip, entered quickly.

'Unziar has won!' he cried.

'Won what?' asked Adiron, the senior man present, as he poured out
another glass of wine.

'Won his second match against Abenfeldt with seven to spare.'

Adiron stretched his legs and leant back; his figure was well adapted
for leaning back.

'My good Adolph, explain yourself.'

'Hadn't you heard of it? Why, they arranged it last night at Countess
Sagan's.'

'Abenfeldt fancies himself as a shot, but he forgot he had to do with
Unziar,' laughed Captain Adiron.

'Abenfeldt bet that he could shoot more swallows in half an hour before
breakfast than any man in Révonde. That was in September, you know, and
Unziar took him up--with service revolvers--and shot fifteen, winning
easily. Abenfeldt can't get over it, and challenged him to a
shooting-match again last night. I say,' Adolph broke off, and his face
altered; he thrust out a little foot and surveyed the spurred boot that
covered it critically, 'I've just ridden back from Brale. That new
charger of mine bolted down the hill by the paling. I went to see
Insermann; they had not been able to move him, you know.'

'Well,' urged all three voices at once.

'Insermann's dead. He died last night at dinner time.'

The men's eyes shot for a second at Insermann's empty place, which he
was never to occupy again.

'Ah, I told him that scooping pass of his was a mistake,' commented
Adiron. 'And the worst of it is that his death breaks the line of the
Xanthal Insermanns. Poor old Insermann! he was the last of a good stock,
and I, for one, don't like new blood. What have you to say about that
pass now, Colendorp? If I am not mistaken, you defended it?'

'Insermann was by three inches too tall,' replied the individual
addressed. 'For a short man one would be hard put to it to discover a
more useful----Hullo!'

The folding doors had been flung open with a crash, and a man of fifty
or thereabouts, dressed in the gorgeous green and gold of the Guard,
strode in tempestuously. He was short and heavily built, with a
weather-red face and a coarse, overhanging moustache, which gave him
rather the expression of an angry walrus. So angry, indeed, was he that
his words came volleying out inarticulately. In his hand he held a
crumpled sheet of parchment.

The men rose as he took his place at the head of the table.

'Insermann's dead, and Selpdorf says----' The Colonel's choked
ejaculations broke, his voice failed him, and he sent the paper
fluttering from his hand across the silver and glass till little Adolf
picked it up. In another moment Colonel Wallenloup was more coherent.

'I am afraid I must have walked up the hill rather too quickly,' he said
apologetically, after draining a great goblet of beer. 'However, it is
not to be denied that M. Selpdorf begins to take too much upon himself.
The entire administration of the State is in his hands, and yet he is
not satisfied with that position! No, he aims even higher; he desires
to nominate the officers of his Highness's Guard!'

Every man present had his own peculiarity. The Colonel's reputation
would not have stood so high as it actually did but for his insensate
temper. Perhaps the anecdote told of him that, when discussing the point
of having been ruled out of action during certain army manoeuvres he
became so enraged that he pursued the umpire in question with a wooden
tent hammer, had added more to his popularity than all his thirty odd
years of service and his immense genius for fortification.

Some of the Continental armies are always marking time, and they do not
prize the most the man who marks time best, but the man who can bring
some humour or touch of romance into the dullness of routine, and they
prefer the humour to be led up to by the winding road of eccentricity.
It was never dull with the Guard. They possessed officers who kept their
world on the move.

'Gentlemen,' said Wallenloup at length, when his last remark had been
received with approval, 'I have the honour to inform you that M.
Selpdorf has seen fit to appoint, _vice_ Captain Insermann, deceased,
Lieutenant John Rallywood, of the Frontier Cavalry.'

A silence followed this announcement.

'Upon whose recommendation has M. Selpdorf taken this step?' inquired
Captain Colendorp gravely.

'Reasons of State--mere reasons of State. He had the audacity to tell me
so.'

'I understood, sir, that you had other views?' said Adiron.

'Well, yes, we had virtually agreed upon our choice, I may say,
gentlemen.'

'Certainly, sir. And you made that clear to the Chancellor?'

'I did so--perfectly clear. I told him in the most reasonable manner
that we wanted no condemned rabble in the Maäsaun Guard! I told him that
we had practically decided on Abenfeldt in case of a vacancy occurring.
I even went so far as to remind him that there had been Abenfeldts among
us for four centuries.'

'He couldn't meet that argument!' exclaimed Adiron.

'No, he parried it, gracefully enough, I admit. He reminded me in turn
that there had been Selpdorfs also in the Guard, and swore that had he a
son of his own to nominate he must still at this moment have given the
preference to this Englishman. I left him to reconsider the matter,
however, and rode home, to find _that_ already waiting for me in my
quarters,' and he pointed to the parchment in Adolf's hand.

Adolf looked up with a smile.

'He will not join immediately, sir, this Rallywood?' he said with his
gentle lisp.

'Not for a week.'

'Then it doesn't really matter, you know,' added the young man.

Wallenloup's red-shot eyes gleamed upon him suddenly.

'As your commanding officer, sir,' he said grimly, 'I don't understand
your meaning, but----' and an odd smile flickered about the savage lips.

'As a private gentleman, Colonel----' put in Colendorp.

'As a private individual I understand your meaning very well. But if I
were here as your colonel, Lieutenant Adolf, by Heaven, sir, not all the
officers of the Guard, past or present'--he rose to his feet as he
spoke, and grasping the hilt of his sword glared round upon
them--'should dare to hint at insult to a comrade!' and he drove the
blade home with a clatter into its scabbard and strode out of the room
as he had come, like a thunderstorm.

The men waited in silence until the echo of his footsteps died away, and
in the mind of each rose a vivid memory. It happened, from causes which
might in the case of the Guard of Maäsau be called natural, that the
three present lieutenants, viz. Unziar, Varanheim, and Adolf, had joined
on the same day, and by way of supporting the traditions of their
immediate predecessors each instantly agreed to challenge each of the
others, the result of which would in all probability have been the
speedy occurrence of three fresh vacancies, in the list of officers.

Wallenloup heard of this and sent for the lieutenants, whom he
considered too valuable to be thus easily lost.

'Gentlemen,' he began, 'I am about to enforce an old order that
expressly forbids quarrels amongst the members of our corps. If you want
to fight, fight some one else. There are plenty of men who stand badly
in need of being killed. Turn your attention to them. But if any trouble
should arise between any two of you, come to me. There has been enough
of this kind of scandal about us lately, and therefore for the future we
will do the thing quietly with a pack of cards, or, if you prefer it,
with dice. The man who loses can--go. There is the river, or for choice,
his own pistol. You understand me?'

Varanheim looked at Unziar and Unziar looked at Adolf, and they smiled.

'I think,' said little Adolf, 'we _might_ find others to brawl with.'

'The river is abominably cold,' added Unziar.

'And the same dish is served for us all,' concluded Varanheim.

Wallenloup laughed.

'I have laid the alternative before you, gentlemen,' he said, 'the cards
or the dice.'

This was the story that rose in the minds of the men round the mess
table, and a minute later they joined in a simultaneous shout of
laughter. Adiron's big face was flushed as he called for a special brand
of champagne wherein to drink the Colonel's health.

'He's magnificent--the old man!' he said when he could speak. 'Let him
alone. He's equal to any mortal occasion! He reminds me of the day when
his Imperial Majesty over the border complimented him on the appearance
of the Guard, saying he should feel proud to number us amongst the
regiments of the German army. "And I can assure your Majesty that the
feeling of admiration is entirely reciprocal," says the C.O. "We should
be happy to incorporate your army in ours!"'

The men had heard the story often before, but it was greeted with all
the relish of novelty, a quality which lives eternally in any anecdote
that tells on one's own side.

Before the laughter had subsided another man entered the room. He was,
perhaps, nearer thirty than twenty, and the face under his dull,
colourless hair was singularly pale, but there was promise of great
strength in the long angular body.

'My congratulations, Unziar.' Colendorp turned to the new-comer.

'Thanks. By the way, have you heard of Insermann? Gone out, they tell
me.'

'Yes. And have you heard of the new appointment?'

'No. But it's Abenfeldt, of course. The Colonel as good as promised him
last year.'

'Ever heard of Lieutenant Rallywood of the frontier?' demanded Colendorp
in his slow way.

'Yes, I do happen to know him.' Unziar looked round in some surprise.
'He was the frontier fellow who undertook to be my second at the station
when I fought De Balsas because he insisted that our trains were
inferior to those in Germany. Rallywood--you don't mean to say?' a slow
comprehension dawning upon him. 'But it's impossible! The fellow's an
Englishman. How could such a thing be possible? On the frontier, yes,
but not in the Guard!'

Colendorp was a silent, reserved man, disliked by persons who met him
casually in society, but to those who inhabited with him the quarters at
the Palace he stood as the impersonation of the grim spirit of the
Guard. He drew away from the table and crossed his legs.

'The idea has at length occurred to one man,' he with his glance on
Unziar's pale face, 'to M. Selpdorf, in fact.'

Unziar looked back at his interlocutor, his eyes hardening.

'Of course,' he said, bringing out each word distinctly, 'Rallywood must
be got rid of.'

'It will offend M. Selpdorf if his nominee be interfered with,' went on
Colendorp.

'I have already undertaken that little matter,' put in Adolf eagerly.

There was an undercurrent of meaning in all this of which each man
present was fully aware. Unziar was presumed to have very strong private
reasons to propitiate rather than to offend the powerful Minister. But
this happened to be a typical instance in which the interests of the
corps over-rode those of the individual. Moreover the custom of the
Guard required the individual most concerned to prove his loyalty at
such times.

Colendorp continued to gaze at Unziar.

'We are much obliged to you, Adolf,' he said courteously; 'but in
compliment to his comrades I feel sure that Unziar will hardly wish to
allow any other to undertake this special matter.'

Adolf would have spoken again, but Unziar stopped him.

'As a personal favour, Adolf, leave it to me,' he said.

Adiron, who had thus far taken no part in the discussion, now struck in.

'But remember, Unziar, that you must act with caution. For obvious
reasons there must be no apparent design. The dispute, whatever it may
turn upon, must appear to come about naturally. Above all, it must not
take place here.'

'Precautions from Adiron!' remarked Colendorp with a thin smile. 'The
affair becomes serious indeed!'

'We cannot afford to offend England while Elmur is at work in this
country. She is at this moment our very good friend,' Adiron observed
apologetically. 'There will be many public occasions--at the Palace
ball, for example.'

'You may trust me to keep up appearances,' said Unziar. 'Then it is
understood that I arrange the affair of Captain Rallywood at the Palace
ball if possible. The matter may safely be left in my hands.'

Once more the folding doors were thrown back, and between the crimson
portieres appeared the face of Colonel Wallenloup, charged with a
strange expression. He advanced a step or two into the room, then turned
to introduce a man behind him.

'Captain Rallywood, gentlemen,' he said.




CHAPTER IV.

DANGER SIGNALS.


A week later Rallywood returned from the frontier to take up his
appointment in the Guard. Advised by a note from Wallenloup that his
quarters were not yet in readiness for him at the Palace, he drove
direct to the Continental on his arrival in Révonde.

Here presently Counsellor dropped in upon him. Rallywood was in his
dressing-room, transforming himself as rapidly as possible into the
likeness of an English gamekeeper; for a magnificent festivity in the
shape of a masked ball was about to take place at the Palace. All the
world had been invited, and as many of the world as could go were going,
each with his or her own dream or purpose, as the case might be.

Major Counsellor sat and surveyed his friend, occasionally offering
suggestions and remarks.

'Are you aware that the Guard of Maäsau never condescends to show itself
in Révonde in any costume but its own blazing uniform? I see you have
your edition of it lying on the chair over there. Why are you not
conforming with their amiable peculiarities?'

Rallywood had his back to Counsellor at the moment.

'So I have heard, but I do not join until to-morrow,' he replied in an
expressionless voice.

'And your quarters in the Palace? How about them?'

'I shall also have the rooms to-morrow.' Then he wheeled round and his
eyes lit on his companion. 'Hullo! I didn't notice you before. Is that
your notion of the gentle art of masquerade? What are you meant to be--a
sort of Tommy Atkins?'

'I believed myself to be disguised as an officer and a gentleman,'
returned Counsellor, rising to give Rallywood the full effect of his
sturdy figure, clad in the uncompromising scarlet so dear to his
country's heart. 'This is the uniform of the 30th Dragoons as worn in or
about the year of grace 1730.'

'Your old regiment?'

Counsellor nodded. 'And my grandfather's,' adding, 'What's the matter
with the dress?'

'Nothing,' said Rallywood, laughing. 'Perhaps I imagined on an occasion
of this kind you might possibly stoop to something more misleading than
this blatantly British get-up.'

'What were you expecting--a troubadour? I am satisfied to appear in my
own character. Only a proportion of the people wear masks at this ball;
it's an annual affair. Besides, life with a purpose is too wearing; one
must always be on the alert and have the purpose in view, like the actor
in a sixpenny theatre, who plays up to the gallery and keeps his eye
open for the rotten egg of his enemy. The egg may not be thrown, but he
must be ready to dodge it all the same. And--I have never excelled in
dodging.'

'Ah--just what the Chancellor thinks. He says he has an immense
admiration for you as the most honest diplomatist in Europe.'

'He put himself to the trouble of mentioning that fact to you, did he?
Then I shall take the precaution of insuring my life. Anything might
happen to a man of whom he has so villainous an opinion.'

Rallywood was arranging his gaiters.

'Why? You don't suppose Selpdorf is going to throw the egg? He spoke of
you with absolute affection.'

'My good John, he has already thrown it! Now I must harass myself to
find out the reason,' said Counsellor. 'You have spoilt my evening out.
Before I had no purpose; now you have thrust one upon me. You should
have kept your news until to-morrow.'

Rallywood was getting himself into his velveteen coat with a good deal
of unnecessary violence.

'I don't believe the Chancellor is so dangerous,' he said carelessly.
'He is a consummate actor, but one knows it.'

'Yes,' assented the Major thoughtfully; 'yet the moment to watch him is
the moment when he acts that he is acting. With the others of us acting
is troublesome; with him it is habitual and a pleasure. However, he has
given you your company; the rank is substantial, as far as it goes, and
at least the accompanying pay is not altogether visionary.'

'Yes, he's done all that.' Rallywood was flinging some of his belongings
back into his portmanteau.

'The next thing will be to find you a mission.'

'He has done that also.' Rallywood raised an expressive face. 'I am to
reform the Guard!'

Counsellor burst into a great laugh, but as suddenly grew grave.

'They will take it kindly! Their welcome to you is likely to be ...
interesting!'

'So I expected. But I went down to the mess last week and was introduced
by old Wallenloup. They were very civil.'

'Ah! and since you left they have been very silent. They are overdoing
it--too civil and too silent. Looks bad, you know.'

'Oh, that's all right; Selpdorf told me not to be drawn into any shallow
quarrels,' Rallywood answered with a smile.

But the Major did not take up the smile. The two vertical lines above
his fleshy nose deepened.

'It strikes me, my boy, that you've got the devil by the tail this
time,' he said gruffly, as his eyes rested for a moment on Rallywood;
'but you know how to take care of yourself. Ready? We can drive to the
Palace together. I have a carriage waiting.'

The couple proceeded downstairs, bought cigarettes of the waiter, and
started. The wind was howling in its usual twanging cadences down the
broad streets, increasing in force as they gained the open, lighted
embankment of the river, along which they passed for some distance
before reaching the courtyard of the Palace.

The great entrance hall was still full of arrivals, while up the wide
central staircase trooped masks and dominos in a changing kaleidoscope
of form and colour. Eager heads thrust this way and that, picturesque
figures grouping and greeting, cavaliers of all periods, maidens of all
nations, monks, barbarians, cardinals, queens, and clowns--sometimes the
wisest heads under the most foolish caps--while here and there a few
favoured paper-folk made desultory notes and sketches.

The painted ceiling stretching overhead is one of the triumphs of
Renaissance art. The identity of the master hand who achieved that
marvellous work has been a mooted point in art circles for a couple of
centuries or thereabouts, and quite a library on the subject exists. The
Maäsauns are very proud of their ceiling, prouder still of the
controversy which has raged and still continues to rage around it.

M. Selpdorf, as representing his master, stood at the head of the
staircase, and received the guests with a good deal more politeness and
discrimination than the Duke himself might have shown, for that
personage was said to have an awkward habit of turning his back upon
those whom he happened to dislike.

Major Counsellor was greeted with effusion; Rallywood with raised
eyebrows and a slight reserve.

'I had hoped to welcome the new captain of the Guard this evening,'
Selpdorf said in a low voice and with a significant glance at
Rallywood's velveteens.

'I have not yet joined, your Excellency. To-morrow I hope to have that
honour,' returned Rallywood and passed on into the gallery beyond. This
gallery, opening from the head of the staircase, ran round the great
saloon, which served the purpose of a ballroom, and many of the guests
were amusing themselves by looking down over the silk-hung balustrade on
the dancers below.

In the gallery Counsellor paused to say a word here and there to several
persons, who, like Rallywood and himself, were without masks, but he
seemed to have curiously little facility in penetrating disguises.
Presently a burly old man in the glittering green and gold of the Guard
disengaged himself from the curtains at the back of the gallery, and
nodding a supercilious acknowledgment of Rallywood's salute, brought his
hand down with a rough heartiness on Counsellor's shoulder.

'Back again in Maäsau, Major Counsellor. I'm glad to see you!' he said
with the laugh in his small eyes marred by a wrinkle of suspicious
cunning, an expression which seemed startling on what was at first
sight a big, bluff, sensual face. 'What good wind has blown you back
among us?'

'Thanks, my lord;' Counsellor turned with ready response. 'I am glad to
find that some of my old friends, especially Count Sagan, have not
forgotten me,' he said simply.

'We believed you had forgotten Maäsau.'

'Maäsau will not allow herself to be forgotten!' laughed Counsellor.
'She is a coquette, and demands consideration from all the world.'

Sagan's face changed.

'Yes, a coquette, who trifles with many admirers but who knows how to
hold her own against them,' he replied significantly. 'Who is that?' he
added, staring after Rallywood. 'I think I recognise him as an English
lieutenant in the Frontier Cavalry.'

'He is the same to-day,' said Counsellor.

'What?' exclaimed Sagan. 'Why to-day? Has he, then, come in for one of
your colossal fortunes?'

'Who can say?' returned Counsellor. 'A fortune or--a colossal
misfortune. Ah! there is Madame Aspard. Au revoir, Count.

Counsellor passed on, perfectly well aware of the heavy meaning attached
to the wilful ignoring of Rallywood's appointment to the Guard by its
colonel-in-chief. There was certainly danger ahead.




CHAPTER V.

GOOD LUCK AND A FIREFLY.


Meanwhile Rallywood had come to an anchor beside one of the high
embossed doors of gold and white which led from the gallery into various
luxurious withdrawing rooms. As he leant against the lintel a voice
suddenly said in his ear, as it seemed--

'My dear lady, why have such scruples? They are the most detestable
things in life and the least profitable. They poison pleasure even when
they do not altogether deprive us of it. And what does one gain by them?
Absolutely nothing, not so much as the good opinion of our friends, who
can never be brought to believe we possess them,' said a man in a
mocking tone.

A distinctly uncomfortable sensation pervaded Rallywood's mind for the
second which preceded the reply. The voice was Baron von Elmur's, and
there was a note of admiration in it that he had reason to be acquainted
with.

A woman laughed, a light, provoking laugh, Rallywood, who was still held
by the crush against the door, knew it well, but he breathed freely, for
it was not the laugh he had feared to hear.

'Nevertheless, Baron, I like scruples; they are always respectable, and
therefore of use--sometimes,' the lady answered in a high, sweet tone.

'Your husband, my Lord Sagan, has not found them indispensable in his
career.'

'But he is not a woman!' with a sigh.

'A beautiful woman can dispense with everything except--her beauty! That
makes fools of us all! Besides----'

The rest of the sentence was lost, as Rallywood managed at length to
force his way through the crowd, which was thickening rapidly.

Then he came upon a group of men he knew, men from the frontier, from
the marshes about Kofn Ford and the crags of Pulesco, men with tanned
skins like his own, and the mark of the collar rim of their high
military tunics round their throats. They were masked, and represented
various original characters, and were enjoying themselves hugely. More
than all were they astonished at being recognised so readily by
Rallywood. Rallywood drew his finger round his throat by way of
explanation. There was a general laugh, and the men scattered each to
seek his own particular pleasure. Rallywood remained looking down on the
dancers. There was in the back of his mind some desire to identify the
lady whose glove was still in his possession. He fixed now on one tall
domino, now on another, but without satisfaction. He was discontentedly
coming to the point of knowing that he had made a fresh mistake, when
he turned his head abruptly, with a vague sense of being looked at, and
saw a black domino standing for an instant alone at the further end of
the gallery. Even under the muffling silken folds he fancied he
recognised the attitude of the girl he had met at the Chancellor's.

He at once began to make his way through the crowd in her direction, but
when next he looked she was gone. He descended to the salon, where he
danced with more than one masked lady. His six feet of stature marked
him out from the shorter Maäsauns, and the tall athletic figure of the
gamekeeper, who moved with so much of unexpected ease and grace, excited
some attention.

After an interval, as he stood back against the wall to allow a couple
who had been following him to pass, they drew up in front of him.

'I obey you, Mademoiselle,' said the man.

His companion, who wore a black domino, made a gesture of dismissal;
then she turned to Rallywood. 'You have been looking for me?' she said,
as her late partner moved away.

'But naturally, Mademoiselle,' replied Rallywood.

'You know who I am?'

'Not in the least. I cannot even make a guess, though I have been
waiting to know since this day last week.'

'It would have been easy to ask the question--of anyone,' she said with
an odd intonation.

'By no means. There are questions which cannot be asked--of anyone,
because the answer touches too closely.' Rallywood pulled himself up
with a sudden sense of being ridiculously in earnest.

And then they were dancing.

'Yet you are not a stranger in Révonde. Madame de Sagan could have
answered your question--had you cared to ask it,' the girl said.

'It did not strike me to ask her. I trusted to the fact that, belonging
to the Guard, I must some day have the good fortune to find you again.'

'You are patient!'

'No,' returned Rallywood, 'I am not patient. But I know that all things
come to him who waits. I wait.'

'So I see, excellently!'

'Have I not waited long enough to hear your name first from your own
lips?'

'Stop for a moment;' then standing beside him, she continued, 'Ask me
to-morrow.'

'If I am alive I will!' he laughed.

He felt her hand move with a quick tremor on his arm.

'I knew it! Which of them has challenged you? Unziar?' The swift
question, echoing his own thought, took him completely by surprise.

He passed his arm round her, for the waltz was nearing its end.

'Shall we go on? No; no one has done me the honour of sending me a
challenge.'

'Let us have an end of this absurd mystery!' said the girl impatiently.
'I am Valerie Selpdorf, and you are----'

'John Rallywood of the Guard of Maäsau!' he interposed. 'I had my
commission from you in the ante-room of the Hôtel du Chancelier. But for
that I should have been more than half inclined to refuse it.'

'I wish you had refused it! It may cost you--more than a man cares to
pay. I thought my father held the power to give any commission he
pleased, but one can never reckon with the Guard. They mean to kill you,
Captain Rallywood! I wanted to warn you, but I think you know more,
perhaps, than I can tell you or than you will tell me. What is going to
happen? I want to help you--you must let me help you!'

Rallywood laughed, but perhaps his arm drew her a little closer as they
moved more slowly during the concluding bars of the waltz.

'My dear Mademoiselle, I assure you that your fears are quite
groundless. I am proud to belong to the Guard of Maäsau, and they have
so far shown no intention of rejecting me. As for duels, if there
happened to be one--are not affairs common in Maäsau? And afterwards,
fewer funerals take place than one would suppose likely! Besides, M.
Selpdorf's wishes cannot be lightly disregarded in Révonde.'

'You will be drawn into a quarrel before the night is over.'
Mademoiselle Selpdorf stated her conviction very plainly, without
noticing his disclaimers.

The music ceased. Rallywood spoke once more. 'To prove to you how little
I anticipate anything of the sort, will you allow me to have the last
dance on the programme?'

'That is nothing! What can I do for you?' she exclaimed.

'Expect me! If you would promise to expect me, I don't yet know the man
who could stop my coming to you.'

The words were lightly spoken, but Valerie Selpdorf, looking up into
Rallywood's eyes, understood that he was likely to be able to make any
words of his good. They were handsome eyes, rather long in shape, frank
and steady, the iris of a dense grey bordering on hazel as became the
sunburnt yellow of his hair and moustache, and at that moment they
contained an expression which remained in Valerie's memory as the
distinctive expression of his face. Whenever in the future she recalled
Rallywood, she thought of him as he looked then.

'I will expect you,' promised Valerie.

They both knew that for the moment they stood together at one of those
cross-roads where life and death meet, where moreover a look and a word
convey a mutual revelation of character such as years of ordinary
intercourse often fail to supply.

Rallywood did not dance again; he contented himself with following the
movements of the black domino. After a time she joined a little group
of people with whom she stood talking. One of the group presently
detached himself and glanced round as if searching for some one. It was
Unziar of the Guard. He quickly perceived Rallywood and at once came
towards him.

'Allow me to recall myself to your memory, Captain Rallywood; I am
Unziar of the Guard,' he said bowing, both voice and bow touching that
extreme of punctiliousness which in itself constitutes an insolence.

'The Guard are said to have long memories. I hope in that particular, at
least, if in no other, to support their traditions,' replied Rallywood,
with an air of cool and serene indifference said to be impossible to any
but men of his race.

'That is--something,' rejoined Unziar with a smile that belied its name.
'We are somewhat exigeant in the Guard. We ask for more than a long
memory--a long pedigree, for example, and a long sword.'

'I have heard that also.'

Unziar glanced sharply at him out of his pale keen eyes. The fellow was
too non-committal to please his taste. To hound a coward out of the
corps promised infinitely less difficulty and enjoyment than he had
hoped for when he pledged himself to rid the Guard of the Englishman.
For perhaps the only time in his life he wished he wore any uniform but
the tell-tale green and gold, for he knew of the Guard that it was often
their 'great name that conquered.'

Spurred by this thought he looked Rallywood very straightly in the face,
and the gleam of his eyes reminded the Englishman of glacier ice.

'Knowing so many of our peculiarities, perhaps Captain Rallywood may no
longer care to join us?' said the Guardsman.

Rallywood laughed with absolute good-humour.

'I both care and--dare!' he said pleasantly.

Unziar's face cleared.

'I am forgetting my errand,' he said with a slight change of tone. 'I
have been sent by a lady to bring you to her. Will you follow me?'

As they approached the group, the shorter of the two black dominoes
spoke.

'You need not trouble to introduce Captain Rallywood, Anthony. We are
already friends; are we not, Monsieur?'

The sweet high voice and the inconsequent childish laugh came upon
Rallywood with a slight shock.

'I could hardly have dared to claim so much,' he said; 'but I cannot
forget that Madame de Sagan--'

She laid her hand with a suspicion of caressing familiarity on his arm.

'Hush, then! Do you not know that it is inadmissible to mention the name
of a masked lady until the clock strikes midnight? Captain Rallywood has
been stationed near the Castle at Kofn Ford; we have therefore
met--occasionally,' continued the lady, addressing herself to
Mademoiselle Selpdorf.

'Captain Rallywood is luckier than most of us,' interposed another
voice. 'He seems to have an enviable facility for appearing where we
others in vain wish to be. Only last week----'

A tall Mephistopheles in scarlet silk, whose high shoulders lent him
added height, had joined them. His peaked cap and feather sparkled with
lurid points of fire. Countess Sagan turned upon him.

'But, Baron, where is then your domino? It is not yet midnight,' she
exclaimed, her hand still remaining on Rallywood's arm.

'Listen!' von Elmur raised his hand. 'The happy moment arrives when the
beautiful faces we long to see----' He gave the rest of the sentence to
the ear of Mademoiselle Selpdorf, who stood silently looking on at the
little scene.

At this instant the music broke off with a sudden clang; the dancers
paused where they stood, as the great bell of the palace tower sent its
strong, mellow boom of midnight out over the frost-bound city.

Rallywood, on looking round an instant later, saw that masks and
dominoes had disappeared. Opposite to him stood Valerie Selpdorf in a
dress of some deep velvety shade, which bore, wrought upon its texture
here and there, tiny horseshoes embossed in iridescent jewels. A diadem
of the same shape crowned her dark hair. Yet all the richness and
delicacy of the blended colourings struck Rallywood with only one odd
remembrance--his own boot-heel outlined in Révonde mud upon a long
_suède_ glove. The same association apparently occurred to Baron von
Elmur. His glance fled from Valerie to Rallywood, and he smiled with
some malice.

'What have we here, Mademoiselle? The stamp of some idealised cavalry
charger?' he asked. 'I should be eternally grateful if only I were--of
the cavalry!'

A sudden intense expression, like a spasm of hope or happiness, crossed
Unziar's pale face in a flash. A word sprang almost involuntarily from
his lips.

'The Guard----' But the girl cut him remorselessly short.

'I do not idealise either the Guard'--she paused, then went on without
taking her eyes from Elmur's face--'or the cavalry. One has illusions,
doubtless, but none so entirely absurd! I have idealised my own desire
merely. I want good luck. I am "Good Luck!"' She spoke the last two
words in English, smiling back at Elmur.

The Baron bowed. He was not beaten yet.

'That is well,' he exclaimed; 'since the cavalry and Guard are disowned,
it means that the good luck is for the poor diplomat!'

'Provisionally, yes,' said the girl.

'Mademoiselle Selpdorf has already given this waltz to me,' said Unziar,
stepping forward.

But Mademoiselle Selpdorf placed her hand within the Baron's ready arm.

'Later, Anthony,' she answered. 'His Excellency deserves a consolation
prize, since my reading of "Good Luck" is not in the German language.'

She turned away, and with her the group parted and scattered.

'You are very much interested; is it not so?'

Rallywood started. The Countess spoke petulantly.

'Do you not know,' she added, 'that the custom in Révonde holds you to
the partner with whom you find yourself when midnight rings? Valerie
Selpdorf is embarrassed with partners--my cousin Anthony Unziar, who
desires perhaps herself, but most certainly her fortune, and our
delightful German Minister, who uses all means that come to hand to win
Maäsau for his master! But I should not say these foolish things to you,
who are of the other party.'

They were dancing by this time, her head near his shoulder, her voice
soft in his bending ear.

'Of the other party?' he repeated. 'I flattered myself that you said
something else just now.'

'Yes, a friend; but I made a mistake--I have none--no, not one true
friend!' the voice said passionately in his ear, 'and my husband----'

Rallywood almost lifted her clear of some crowding couples, and then
gently released her. In a vague way he felt the force of her appealing
beauty as he had felt it intermittently for some months past. It touched
him for the moment, but he was apt to forget both it and the very
existence of the woman herself directly he parted from her.

'Count Sagan is colonel-in-chief of the Guard?' he asked, and the
question seemed to fit in with her train of thought.

She made no immediate response, but with a light touch on his arm led
him to a flower-banked apartment, about which a few couples were
scattered in various convenient nooks. She sank upon a sequestered
settee, and made room for him beside her.

'Yes, he is colonel-in-chief of the Guard because they think him too old
to act any longer as its real commandant. He was the first soldier in
Maäsau and the most unequalled sportsman. He was all these things, and I
am proud of them! But look at me!'

She rose languidly and stood before him. Rallywood saw a slight woman,
tall and exquisitely fair, who carried her small head with its gleaming
coronet royally. Her skin and her soft flushed cheeks had the pure,
evanescent quality of a child's complexion. Moreover, her chief charm
was perhaps her air of child-like innocence. Isolde of Sagan had seldom
looked more lovely; she was honestly touched by self-pity, and was
posing as the proud yet disillusioned wife of a man hopelessly older
than herself, and for the time being she believed earnestly in that view
of her lot.

'All these things have been,' she added softly, her eyes filling with
tears, 'but _I am_! Can I ever be satisfied with what only was?'
Rallywood's face altered. Like any other man in such a position he felt
immensely sorry for her. She saw the advantage she had gained, and at
once the coquette awoke in her.

'Captain Rallywood,' she sank down beside him again, 'I need a friend in
whom I can trust, who will ask nothing of me, but who will give me all
the things I most want.'

The interpretation of this enigmatical speech was left to the ear, for
the young Countess was gazing at her big black fan, where luminous
fireflies hung tangled amongst the dusky feathers. Quickly with some
dissatisfaction she became aware that Rallywood was not looking at
her--as he should have been doing--but staring in front of him with a
grave expression. Well, she knew she could make him look at her as she
desired--yet. It was but a matter of time.

'I think you may count upon me,' said Rallywood at last. He believed in
her, which was good; moreover, he meant what he said; yet the speech was
wholly lacking in the flavour which to the Countess Sagan was the
flavour of life.

'After all, it is little to promise, and I may not need your friendship
for very long,' she replied, plucking a glittering firefly from her fan
and laying it on his sleeve with her sweet light laugh. 'Like a firefly
I shall dance out my short night, and die quickly before life grows
stale!'

Rallywood took out his cigarette case of Alfaun leather-work, and
dropped the firefly with its sparkle of diamond-dust into it.

'I don't like to hear you say that,' he said in his quiet way, which the
listener decided might mean so much or so little. 'We must all go out
some time, I suppose, but one always wants the beautiful things to live
for ever.... Meanwhile, can you spare me another dance?'




CHAPTER VI.

THE CLOISTER OF ST. ANTHONY.


The night was drawing to a close. The long supper room was almost
deserted. Amongst the lingerers were a few officers in the uniform of
the Guard, who stood talking together in one corner.

'The fellow has given you no chance,' Adolf was saying gloomily.

'Have him in here! Kick him in here, if necessary!' said Colendorp.

'I don't think you will find him reluctant, drawled Unziar. 'I have
spoken with him already this evening, and I--ah--rather liked what he
said.'

'Then why haven't you arranged it? To-morrow he joins--and he must never
be permitted to join the Guard! We might have asked Abenfeldt to remove
him, but the Guard has up to the present day been able to set its own
house in order,' added Colendorp with a sour glance at Unziar. 'Has his
Excellency the Chancellor thrown out too powerful a hint about the
fellow?--I saw Mademoiselle dancing with him this evening--I mean a hint
too powerful to be disregarded by those who wish to retain the good
opinion of M. Selpdorf!'

Unziar scowled.

'I permit no one--not one of my own regiment--to insult me,' he rejoined
with a white blaze of anger on his pale face, and the wine in his hand
trembled.

Adolf suddenly stretched across to take up a decanter, and catching the
glass with the edge of his heavy epaulet, knocked it from Unziar's
fingers.

'We are losing sight of the main question,' he said. 'May I suggest,
sir,' to Colendorp, who happened to be the captain of his own squadron,
'that it is unusual to be obliged to act so carefully as we have been
advised to do in this case?'

Colendorp's dark face grew darker, but the honour of the Guard over-rode
all personal considerations.

'I have been hasty, Unziar,' he said in a stifled voice after a slight
pause.

Unziar bowed and continued as if the interlude with its covert allusions
had not taken place.

'It has been difficult to get at Rallywood this evening. Yet let us see
how he shoots before we conclude that he has any rooted objection to
handling a pistol. I agree with Captain Colendorp, that the affair
should be brought off to-night. I will go and find the Englishman.'

He had already walked towards the broad arched doorway, when among the
palms and the hangings which shrouded it two men appeared. One was
Counsellor, in his blazing red uniform, beside him Rallywood's tall
figure, clad in soft brown tones of velveteen, looked almost black.

Behind them again appeared other faces.

Rallywood took in the meaning of the situation at a glance. Without any
perceptible pause he held out his hand to Counsellor.

'Well, good-bye, Major, since you are going. I will turn up to-morrow as
early as I can,' he said.

Counsellor understood also. In his position it was impossible to do
anything for Rallywood. As an agent secretly accredited by the Court of
St. James's, he must hold aloof and neutral in all personal quarrels. He
appreciated the tact with which Rallywood dismissed him from a scene
which promised to be distinctly awkward, but his hand itched to shoot
down the flower of the Guard of Maäsau for the insolence that dared to
doubt the worthiness of an Englishman of birth to hold a place among
them.

'Good-bye, Rallywood,' he said gruffly, and turned on his heel to find
himself face to face with Baron von Elmur and one or two officers of the
Frontier Cavalry.

'There is about to be a storm, Major, observed Elmur, passing Counsellor
with a cool nod.

'So it seems. A storm in a teacup!' retorted the Major derisively.

Meanwhile Rallywood, with the men of the Cavalry, his old
brother-officers, behind him, advanced to meet Unziar.

'We of the Guard are hoping to break glasses with you gentlemen of the
Cavalry before the night is over,' began Unziar, alluding to a fashion
amongst the military contingent in Maäsau of taking wine together and
breaking the glasses afterwards as a sign of unalterable good feeling
and mutual loyalty. Unziar included Rallywood with the two officers
beside him in this invitation, by a slight inclination of the head.

The three men accepted, but there was a little stiffening in the
attitude of each, for Rallywood had friends here who were resolved, if
only for the honour of the Frontier Corps, to see their late comrade
through the coming trouble.

Before the wine filled the glasses, Adolf was already deep in the story
of Unziar's shooting-match with Abenfeldt.

'Allow me the honour of drinking with you, Monsieur,' said Colendorp to
Rallywood. 'It was in truth a notable performance; we have never had
even in the Guard a surer shot than Unziar,' he added, alluding to the
anecdote.

Rallywood had just time to make up his mind and determine upon his
course of action.

The glasses clinked together, and then clashed upon the floor, where the
men set their heels upon them. Then Rallywood turned to Unziar:

'I compliment you, Lieutenant Unziar,' he said. 'I already knew that you
were a swordsman not easily to be matched; since, in fact, the little
affair at Alfau, when I had the pleasure of acting as your second. But
the pistol is, I venture to say, another matter.'

Unziar set his shoulders back with an indescribable suggestion of
scornful defiance.

'May I ask you to state precisely what you mean, Monsieur?' he answered.

'I mean that although a man may shoot any number of swallows of a
morning before breakfast, it does not follow that he can hit a man at,
say, twenty paces.' Rallywood spoke deliberately.

The whole group of men listened in silence. Then Unziar leant towards
Rallywood with a smile.

'We can but try, Captain Rallywood,' he said gently.

Although everyone in their immediate neighbourhood was listening, from
the other side of the hall they looked, no doubt, like a group of tall
men engaged in the ordinary conversation and common amenities of
society, the only noticeable difference being that Unziar was a little
more deprecating and low-voiced than usual. Elmur, standing near by,
filled his glass and drank, with a silent nod at Unziar.

'I shall be delighted to assist you in settling the question,' returned
Rallywood; then, consulting his card, he added, I find I have an
engagement for the last dance, some twenty minutes hence. May I
recommend the interval to your consideration?'

The two frontier men stepped forward simultaneously to offer their
services to Rallywood. He thanked them, and was about to accept, when
Captain Adiron interposed.

'If either of these gentlemen will resign in my favour I shall feel it
an obligation, as I can then offer myself to Captain Rallywood as one of
his seconds.'

Courtesy demanded that Rallywood and his friends should fall in with
this proposal, and Rallywood, replying to Adiron, added:

'You have heard exactly what passed between Lieutenant Unziar and
myself, and I am sure I cannot do better than leave the matter in your
hands in conjunction with my friend, Colonel Jenard.'

Colendorp and Adolf, as representing Unziar, accompanied Rallywood's
seconds to make the necessary arrangements. Meanwhile, Rallywood
strolled back to the gallery above the ballroom, and looked down at the
dancers. He could not see Valerie, but he remembered Selpdorf and his
injunctions to avoid a quarrel, and smiled as he thought over the words,
since the Chancellor must have been perfectly aware that he had pushed
an unwelcome foreigner into a position that could only be held by force
of arms, even in the case of a Maäsaun candidate of noble blood. At that
moment he saw his own position clearly. He knew himself to be an
unconsidered unit in the big game of diplomacy that was being played
over his head, and he remembered that the day of human sacrifices is not
yet, as many suppose, quite a thing of the past. The gods are changed,
or called by other names, and the high priest no longer dips his hands
in the actual blood of the victim; but the whole deadly drama goes on
repeating itself as it always must while the generations of men have
their being under various modifications of the primeval system of the
strong hand. That his life might be deliberately requisitioned by
Selpdorf to forward some secret policy of his own was by no means an
impossible supposition. Rallywood glanced at the clock. In another
quarter of an hour he must either be dancing with Valerie Selpdorf or
lying dead in the famous Cloister of St. Anthony, which overlooked the
river, and where many another man had died under much the same
circumstances.

Rallywood laughed again and turned on his heel. At that period it did
not seem to matter greatly which way it ended, but he was going to carry
the undertaking through with what credit his wits afforded him.

In the meantime the Cloister of St. Anthony had been lit up from end to
end with a brilliant light, and while the other two seconds went to
fetch their respective principals to the spot, Adiron and Adolf
exchanged a word or two as they waited.

'The Englishman took it very well,' remarked Adiron.

'Devilish well,' lisped little Adolf; 'he made rather a favour, of it
just to satisfy Unziar, you know! He's too sure of himself, this
Rallywood. If he kills Unziar, which is unlikely, I shall have to finish
the affair myself!' with a frowning importance that sent Adiron into one
of his ready roars of laughter.

The Cloister was still echoing with the sound when Rallywood,
accompanied by Jenard, arrived from the other side of the palace, where
the state rooms were situated. On the way Jenard explained to Rallywood
that the procedure decided upon as being best suited to the requirements
of the case was simply alternate shots at twenty paces.

Rallywood and Unziar being placed, one of the men sent a coin spinning
up into the air. Then followed a long minute of silence.

St. Anthony's Cloister looks inward towards a quadrangle; the outer side
bordering the river has been glazed in, but in the interval of waiting
Rallywood could hear the water plashing and sobbing against the
foundations of the old walls, and the wild sound of the _tsa_, sweeping
down from the snowy frontier above Kofn Ford, as it wailed and howled
drearily along the dark waters. He almost started when Adiron,
approaching him, said:

'You have won the first shot, Captain Rallywood.'

'Then I am afraid I must beg of you to do me the great favour of
rearranging the affair,' replied Rallywood; 'for if I should be
unfortunate enough to kill Lieutenant Unziar, or even to disable him,
the question at issue between us must remain undecided for at the best
an indefinite time, and possibly for ever. If you recollect, the matter
over which he was pleased to differ with me was my expressed opinion
that though a good shot may bring down swallows to perfection, he might
miss a man at a moderate distance.'

'You have won the toss,' remonstrated Adiron.

'Yes, unluckily. But I feel sure that Lieutenant Unziar will be kind
enough not to hold me to that, since it is evident that the first shot
should be his.'

Adiron grinned. It was his way of showing many mixed emotions.

'I like your way of conducting a dispute, Captain Rallywood,' he said;
'but as your second I must warn you that it is the worst luck in the
world to refuse luck. You have won the toss. In declining to profit by
it you are paying court to death.'

Rallywood shrugged his shoulders.

'I may prove my point,' he retorted, smiling.

'As for that, it might be decided on a different basis later on,' urged
Adiron.

For the second time that night Rallywood looked at his watch.

'I have an engagement in seven minutes,' he said. 'I shall be glad if
you will convey my meaning to Lieutenant Unziar.'

'As you like,' said Adiron; 'but in case of accident I should like to
take the opportunity of saying to you now, that in the whole range of my
experience I have never derived more pleasure from the attitude of a
principal than I have on this occasion from yours.'

Adiron concluded with a bow and recrossed to the other second. Since the
Englishman was determined to go to his grave in so excellent and gallant
a fashion, by heaven, it was Victor St. Just Adiron who would escort him
to its brink with all the honours of a fine and hereditary courtesy! He
was a man quite capable of losing himself in a cause; therefore, as he
approached the other seconds, he came as a partisan of Rallywood's,
resolved that his man should have his will in spite of all or any
opposition.

'My principal,' he began, 'has just pointed out that this meeting is
rather in the nature of the justification of an opinion than a quarrel
in the ordinary sense;' then, repeating Rallywood's contention, he
added, 'You will see that it remains for Lieutenant Unziar to prove
himself in the right.'

Colendorp threw out a bitter oath, Adolf objected softly, and Jenard
stood silent and in dismay. What could Rallywood mean by throwing away
his life? But Adiron backed up Rallywood; he was going to bring this
thing to pass! Rallywood should have a last satisfaction in this life,
because he was worthy of it.

'If Lieutenant Unziar chooses to withdraw his opinion,' he said, 'of
course Captain Rallywood will not go any further into the matter. For
the rest, he has an appointment in less than seven minutes. On his
behalf I can but insist that his suggestion affords the only possible
way out of the difficulty.'

Reluctantly the other men yielded. Rallywood had gained a moral
advantage. If he were destined to die, he would die in a manner that
would go down into the history of the Guard. Hastily and in accordance
with the request of Rallywood, the change of procedure was explained to
Unziar.

The two opponents stood absolutely still, Rallywood's face wearing the
expression of one who is politely interested in something that is
happening to somebody else.

At the signal Unziar raised his pistol and fired.

Rallywood stood in his place for some thirty seconds, while there was a
sound of splintering glass as the bullet rushed out into the darkness
above the river; then he advanced smiling.

'It seems,' he said,'that I was right.'

Unziar stared at him.

Rallywood handed his pistol to Jenard, and bowing to the assembled men
ceremoniously, he went on:

'I hope we may consider the affair concluded, and as I am engaged for
the dance that is about to begin, I trust you will excuse me.'

And with another bow he was gone. No one spoke for a little while, then
Unziar walked towards the others with no very pleasant face. That
Rallywood had done a thing above reproach, and in a manner above
reproach, made it none the easier for his pride to accept the result.
But he was above all considerations and before all considerations true
to himself--to Anthony Unziar.

'Captain Rallywood has made his point and a reputation,' he said at
last. 'I think, Colendorp, you will agree with me that as men of honour
we must consider the matter ended.'

'And in Captain Rallywood's favour?' asked Colendorp suddenly.

'Certainly. What do you say, gentlemen?' Adiron spoke with warmth.

'I suppose we must concede that it was neatly done, and that Captain
Rallywood deserves his success,' agreed Adolf with some constraint.

Unziar's generosity rose to the occasion.

'Our gain in the Guard is your loss in the Cavalry, Colonel Jenard,' he
said handsomely.

Jenard acknowledged the implied compliment, and went off leaving the
three Guardsmen together.

'We shall have to swallow the Englishman after all,' said Colendorp
blackly. 'How came you to miss him, Unziar?'

Unziar raised his eyebrows.

'Who can tell? Luck, I suppose,' replied he. 'But I, for one, am not
sorry. The man's worth keeping.'

'He shapes well,' commented Adolf. 'But how will the chief take it?'

'I am going to find the Colonel and tell him what has happened,' said
Unziar. 'I don't know how you fellows feel about it, but I say for
myself that the Guard might have done a good deal worse.'

Colonel Wallenloup was at that moment engaged in promenading the
ballroom with Valerie Selpdorf on his arm. She belonged to that
sufficiently rare type of girl whose society is sought and enjoyed by
those older men who, as a rule, are content to stand by and watch the
current of younger life sweep by them, men who are in no sense gallants,
but who find a strong attraction in talking to a young and clever woman
on all kinds of subjects that too often lie outside the domain of the
thoughts of youth. Youth, engrossed in the problem of self, persistently
ignores those far more varied and profound problems to be found hidden
in more experienced hearts and lives.

Wallenloup, who distrusted all women and was accordingly disliked by not
a few, always claimed a waltz with Valerie whenever he had the good
fortune to meet her. To him she was a woman worth talking to first, and
a pretty girl afterwards.

Their dance having concluded, Wallenloup walked down the room with his
partner, continuing his monologue. Valerie had been very silent, but the
Colonel had more to say than usual, and his subject happened to be a
very scathing condemnation of outside interference with the affairs of
the Guard. Valerie listened without words. Perhaps her heart beat more
quickly, and there may have been more anxiety in her mind as to the
final upshot of the case in point than her companion could have guessed.
But she showed a flattering amount of interest in his opinion, although
she was well aware that the question was probably being settled once for
all, as far as Rallywood was concerned, in St. Anthony's Cloister,
without the help of Colonel Wallenloup.

Suddenly she leant a little more heavily on his arm.

'My dear Mademoiselle, what is the matter?' exclaimed the Colonel. 'You
are pale. What is it?'

'I am tired, and the saloon has become so hot, but--thanks, I see my
next partner coming,' she answered as Rallywood came towards them.

Wallenloup looked down at her with some reproach.

'This fellow?' he said.

'But why not?' she replied with a little smile. 'Is he not one of the
Guard? Can I aspire to anything higher?'

'Captain Rallywood is not yet of the Guard!' said the old soldier; then
he bowed coldly and turned on his heel, without giving any symptom of
having recognized Rallywood beyond his scornful words.

'I have come, Mademoiselle,' said Rallywood.

The girl's pale cheeks were now touched with a delicate carmine, such as
shines between the fingers of a hand held up against a light. The flush
seemed to heighten and enhance her beauty, or rather it lent her a novel
kindling charm that struck home upon Rallywood's mood.

'What have you been doing?' she asked with interest.

'Breaking glasses with the Guard,' he replied.

'That ceremony occasionally includes the use of a sword or a pistol.'

'I have used neither,' he replied.

'Are you then also a diplomatist?' she asked with quick scorn.

Rallywood pulled his moustache. He did not pretend to understand women,
but that Mademoiselle Selpdorf should now despise him for escaping a
danger she had half an hour ago trembled over and prayed to avert,
seemed at best rather inconsistent.

'I have attempted to be diplomatic now and then, perhaps,' he said, 'but
not always with conspicuous success.'

'Diplomacy was never meant,' she said, looking frowningly at him through
her black lashes, 'never meant to be a private virtue. Its only excuse
lies in a national necessity.'

'M. Selpdorf instructed me to avoid a quarrel,' rejoined Rallywood.

'What do you suppose he meant,' she asked bitterly, 'knowing you had to
deal with the Guard?'

'Ah!' and a slow smile dawned in his eyes; 'now I wonder what he meant
knowing I had to deal with the Guard?'

Valerie frowned again; her words were not particularly expedient under
the circumstances, but she disliked having them flung back at her.

'I beg your pardon. Of course I know nothing of--of these things. The
matter concerns you only. But I thought, and I am sorry for the mistake,
that you looked like a man!'

There was a jingle of spurs behind her as she was about to turn away,
and Colonel Wallenloup strode up hurriedly.

'Captain Rallywood, why are you not wearing the uniform of your
regiment--of the Guard?' he asked in a loud tone.

There was a stir amongst the people about them; many stopped and drew
nearer to hear the end of this unprecedented conversation.

'Because I intend to resign my commission to-morrow, sir,' replied
Rallywood haughtily.

'On the part of the Guard, I beg of you to reconsider that decision,'
urged Wallenloup.

He shook hands gravely with the young man, then detaching a star of
gun-metal from his breast, he awkwardly attempted to fasten it to the
lapel of Rallywood's coat. 'I see you have not the star of the Guard.
May I give you mine? Unziar, see to this; I cannot attach it.'

'No, Colonel Wallenloup; that should rather be my duty,' said the
Countess Sagan, who happened to be standing by.

Wallenloup grunted.

'As the wife of our colonel-in-chief, madame, I feel sure your kindness
will be appreciated,' he said grimly.

Madame de Sagan's blue eyes glanced up into Rallywood's face as her
fingers touched his breast.

'No, as your friend,' she said softly.

Then all at once Rallywood discovered how numerous were his friends and
well-wishers in Maäsau. He was overwhelmed with congratulations and
introductions, but the memory of that night which lingered longest with
him was the tall figure of Valerie Selpdorf standing aside and looking
coldly on. She expressed no pleasure at the turn events had taken, she
offered no congratulations, but she met Unziar with what was only too
plainly a mocking comment on the little scene, and the next moment was
floating down the long room in the young Maäsaun's arms to the music of
the last waltz.




CHAPTER VII.

ONE WOMAN'S DIPLOMACY.


There are men who though conspicuously in the world are never of it.
Counsellor was one of these. He gave the impression of being a
spectator; one who looked on at the play of common ambitions and
intrigues with an amused and impersonal interest. He was drawn into no
quarrels. Those who hated him most continued to shake hands with him,
and none could accuse him of being a partisan. Yet he was rather
truculent than meek, entirely ready to give his opinion, often with a
surprising frankness, but maintaining throughout the complex relations
of his life a superb reserve that formed a defence behind which neither
favour nor enmity could penetrate.

He stayed on at Révonde, though the _tsa_ continued to blow
relentlessly. Affairs were yet in a chaotic condition and he lingered
grumblingly at the club, declaring it was too cold to travel, and
apparently finding his chief relaxation in privately deriding Rallywood
for the favours which Révonde society was thrusting so lavishly upon
him.

In the untiring whirl and tangle of court life and gaiety Rallywood
lived and moved with a growing enjoyment that half surprised himself,
and for which he accounted on the score of change from the dull
drudgery of the frontier. His acceptance by the Guard had been thorough;
even the colonel-in-chief, Count Sagan, whose strongest point was not
courtesy, had given him a pronounced recognition. The pretty Countess
demanded a good deal of his attention and attendance, and this fact
brought down upon him some of Counsellor's most scathing jeers.

'Gallantries are in vogue, my boy, and you are qualifying for a high
place amongst the Maäsauns,' he said. 'She is a deuced pretty woman. I
offer you my compliments.'

'She is pretty,' replied Rallywood, 'but there are a good many people in
Maäsau who think her handsomer than I do.'

'Yet you tell me that you are again on your way to her house this
evening. Can't you get through the day without a glimpse of her?'

'Does it seem so bad as all that?' asked Rallywood reflectively. 'Yes, I
suppose I like going there; yet as I have said before, there are a good
many people who appreciate her more than I do.'

'Then what in the world takes you there?'

An odd expression grew slowly into the young man's face.

'Because of the other people, I suppose,' he repeated dreamily.

'As for instance?'

Rallywood woke up from his thoughts and shook himself.

'Unziar,' he returned with a grin.

Counsellor opened the stove and threw in the remnant of his cigar.

'Ah!' he commented significantly; 'and I presume Unziar goes there to
meet you. I begin to see.'

Rallywood laughed.

'I'm hanged if I do! By the way, the Countess wants of all things to
make a friend of you. She says the English are so reliable. But you are
such an old bear the women can't get at you.'

'So much the better for me,' was the grim reply. 'Also I am sorry that I
can't reciprocate the Countess's opinion of me. There are very few
reliable women. If I had ever found one I might have married her.'

'That is a hard saying, Major. You've been unlucky. That's where it
hurts with you!'

'No, I've no personal feeling in the matter. I share the opinion in
common with many wise men. Let me refer you to Solomon, the census of
whose harem warrants us in believing that what he didn't know about
women wasn't worth knowing. Yet he records as his experience, "One man
among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all these have I not
found."'

'I bet he didn't! You can't sample a delicate quality in the bulk,'
retorted Rallywood, and was already at the door when an idea stopped
him. 'Look here, Major; come with me and revise your verdict.'

To his surprise Counsellor stood up and asked one more question.

'Countess Isolde invited me?'

'Any number of times, as you know.'

'The more fool she,' growled Counsellor; 'I'll go.'

The cotillon, danced with its hundred absurdities, was as fashionable at
Révonde as elsewhere. Counsellor, like a courtly bear, was induced to
join in its whimsical vagaries.

The details of the cotillon obtaining at that period do not concern us
here. It is sufficient to say that, as a result of some evolution, by
chance or by choice Counsellor found himself with the Countess on a
raised daïs at one end of the room, while Mademoiselle Selpdorf and
Rallywood formed the corresponding couple at the other end. Between them
the dance proceeded, thus leaving the respective couples virtually
isolated for a few minutes.

'It was delightful of you to come to our little party to-night,' the
Countess was saying to her companion. 'Now that you have come to see me
here, can I not induce you to come also to Sagan next week? We are going
out there for a few days. Do think of it.'

'You are too kind, my dear madame, but an old man like myself may be out
of place.'

The Countess sighed a little.

'Of course you are not at all old,' she said, shaking her head at him,
'though you are fond of playing the part. But if you want to be old you
can be old in good company at the Castle, for the Duke will be
there--you know he is a cousin of ours.'

Counsellor looked back into the smiling blue eyes. Most men would have
succumbed to their innocent flattery. To the Major they only suggested
an infinite capacity for foolishness.

'Don't you think we could exchange our Duke for another, a more
interesting one?' she added, misled perhaps by his look. 'Duke Gustave
is so wrapped up in his stupid gambling, and altogether there are many
things----' her speech tailed off inconsequently into a confused
silence.

'Wanting? Certainly! For example, we have no Duchess,' said Counsellor
gallantly. 'We need a pretty Duchess. But is it not possible that Maäsau
may yet boast the most adorable Duchess in Europe?'

Countess Isolde started and flushed like a pleased child, and her eyes
lit up as she laid her fan on Counsellor's stout knee with a
confidential impulsive gesture.

'But England does not like the idea of pretty Duchesses?' she ventured
reproachfully. 'And you are only a flatterer after all!'

The Major raised his bushy white eyebrows.

'Have I that reputation?'

'No, they say you are terribly frank;' then a design to sound this
difficult and usually unapproachable diplomat came into her irrational
head. Older men than he had been vanquished by her beauty ere now.
'England has not yet recognized my husband's claim as next heir,' she
whispered. 'Major Counsellor, do you think your nation could ever be
brought to recognize me as Duchess?'

'If the occasion arose,' answered the wily old soldier softly, 'I do not
see--speaking as a man--how any request of yours could be refused. But I
cannot answer for my nation. Still, if the occasion arose----' he
hesitated as if searching for words, but in reality, waiting for his
companion to take up the unfinished sentence.

The Countess trembled with excitement. This was indeed a triumph. She,
'silly Isolde,' as old Sagan was ever ready to call her, had gained a
little bit of information they would give their ears to possess, but she
would keep it and use it at her leisure. Meanwhile she must strike while
the iron of old Counsellor's nature was yet hot.

'But the occasion will arise, believe me! Perhaps soon, at Sagan!' As
she spoke she started violently, and her face turned white as Count
Sagan stood before them.

'Do you feel inclined for a hand of whist, Counsellor?' he said
abruptly, with a wrathful, questioning glance at his wife. 'Has my wife
been boring you with her chatter?'

'On the contrary, Major Counsellor has promised to join us at the Castle
next week,' exclaimed his wife.

Sagan's bloodshot eyes darkened. He had the guile of a plotter, but
lacked something of the self-control. Counsellor, who appeared to be
watching the dancers, turned upon this and added:

'And I have been thanking Madame de Sagan for the invitation.'

'Ah, I knew you wouldn't come! Well, you will lose nothing. We shall
have a houseful of fools,' interrupted the Count roughly.

'I have already accepted, and will with your permission, Count, be one
of the fools,' replied Counsellor genially.

The Countess understood she had in some way put her foot in it, but as
the two men walked away together she nodded complacently to herself,
with the words, 'I know what I know!'

The tide of dancers still swept backwards and forwards as Madame de
Sagan idly observed them, until her glance chanced to fall upon the
opposite couple at the further end of the saloon. Something in Valerie's
air fixed her wandering attention at once with a little shock. What was
Rallywood saying to her? And where was Anthony Unziar? The Countess
Isolde had to the full the all-devouring vanity of her type, but now,
for once in her life, she felt desirous of forwarding a love affair that
was not her own.

'You are going to Sagan, of course?' Valerie had said to her partner as
they stood together.

'I think not,' Rallywood replied.

'I thought you would be sure to be in attendance'--she glanced
carelessly towards the daïs where the Countess was at the moment laying
her fan on Counsellor's knee--'as usual.'

'No, Unziar is the lucky man,' Rallywood answered without significance
in his tone.

'Nonsense! Anthony is her cousin!' said the girl impatiently.

Rallywood's grey eyes were on her face.

'Whose cousin? What do you mean?' he asked innocently.

Valerie bit her lip. She hated this Englishman. Of all her acquaintances
he alone, in his blundering way, was able to put her somehow at a
disadvantage.

'When the Duke goes to Sagan,' she said, without noticing his question,
'the Count has the privilege as colonel-in-chief of the Guard, of
inviting any two officers he pleases to act with the escort. So we shall
see.'

'I wonder,' said Rallywood after a pause, 'where you get your
impressions from, Mademoiselle?'

'I see--like other people. We all form our judgments on what we see
and--know!'

'What do you know, for instance?'

'I heard of you when you were at Kofn Ford, near the Castle of Sagan,'
she answered.

Rallywood was only human, and however moderately he may have returned
Madame de Sagan's preference, he was fully aware of its existence. In
those days on the frontier he had, rather from fastidiousness than
principle perhaps, avoided her and her invitations whenever possible.
But that was one thing; it was another to hear the matter coolly
alluded to by the girl beside him. Involuntarily he drew a little away
from her. His notions were founded less on actual knowledge and
experience of women--for of that he had little--than gathered from that
idealized version of the sex with which the right-minded male animal is
usually furnished by his own mental and emotional processes. So far his
intercourse with Isolde of Sagan had been limited to certain sentimental
passages; the initiative lay with the lady, but Rallywood had once or
twice been distinctly wrought upon by the appeals to his sympathy and
pity. Now, however, looked at from a fresh standpoint, the one in fact
from which Valerie viewed it, the subject became suddenly repellent, and
he slid away from the discussion with another question.

'What has Unziar been saying of me? You have treated me differently
since--that night.'

There appeared to be no need to particularize the night.

Mademoiselle Selpdorf understood both the first involuntary movement and
the change of subject, and resented them equally.

'Anthony is generous, so generous!' she said with some warmth. 'I
suppose it is an English trait to take everything and to give nothing in
return. Anthony told me of all that took place in the Cloister of St.
Anthony. Your action seemed to him so fine, poor fellow!--but not to me.
You believed in your luck, of course, and took the hazard and won,
leaving him hopelessly at a disadvantage. I should not have accepted the
position as he did--I should have forced you to fight it out sooner or
later! I had rather a hundred times have died by your bullet than lived
to endure your triumph!'

Rallywood pondered this view of the matter before he spoke.

'I dare say you are right,' he said at last; 'at least, no woman could
have been so generous to another woman as he was to me.'

'You are complimentary, Captain Rallywood!'

'I beg your pardon. I only meant that women are not generous as between
themselves. Looked at from your point of view, I see that I was wrong
about that affair with Unziar. But more than all, it proves he is a
splendid fellow.'

Now Unziar's praise from Rallywood's lips displeased Mademoiselle
Selpdorf almost more than all which had gone before.

'It is easy to say these things, but'--she rose eagerly--'at last that
figure is ended. What a stupid interval it has been!' she added with a
little smile.

'I am sorry. I always have the misfortune to bore you,' Rallywood said,
accepting his snub meekly.

'Never mind! You can't help it!' she responded with a pleasant nod as
she left him.

Rallywood remained standing where he was.

'A very nasty one indeed for me. I shouldn't wonder, though, if she
forgave me for the sake of that last back-handed blow!' he reflected
with some amusement.

Which proves that Révonde was teaching Rallywood something that has its
own value at one period or another of a man's life. He was too poor to
dream of marrying anyone, much less the daughter of the Chancellor of
Maäsau, a woman whose training and tastes had not been guided on the
lines of simplicity or economy. That Valerie Selpdorf attracted him was
a truth to which his eyes began to be opened at the moment when
Counsellor asked him why he haunted Madame de Sagan's entertainments.
Then it had struck him that the almost certain chance of meeting Valerie
was his chief motive, yet he believed it was safe to divulge to himself,
since the girl bitterly disliked him, and he, in the strength of the
insular and Puritan side of his nature, disapproved of her. It was the
pleasure of the hour, no one looked beyond that in Révonde, and
Rallywood had fallen into the universal habit of drifting.

'You are thoughtful. What can you have been talking about?' asked the
Countess, coming up.

'Mademoiselle Selpdorf has been giving her opinion of me. It is not
flattering, and I am depressed,' returned Rallywood, hoping the Countess
meant to talk of Valerie.

'Has she? She is often absurd in her ideas. But we need not talk of her.
To turn to something pleasanter, do you know that I have just persuaded
Major Counsellor to come to us at Sagan?'

Rallywood instantly perceived that the three or four days at the old
frontier castle might prove to be a singularly interesting period, and
regretted that he was not to be a guest also.

'And you are coming too, are you not?' went on Madame de Sagan, with a
note in her voice that Rallywood was learning to dread.

'I fancy not. Unziar and Adiron have been mentioned.'

'Yes, Anthony Unziar, because he is my cousin, and for the sake of
Valerie. Also Captain Colendorp. I do not like him, he is always black
and sneering, but the Count chose him yesterday, and then I suggested
yourself. They were rather doubtful about you, but Baron von Elmur
consented. And I was so glad--Jack!'

The friendship had been progressing, it will be perceived, during the
last three weeks. But Rallywood made no immediate response, being
absorbed in digesting the information she had given him. That the German
minister should be permitted to dictate the guests for the three days'
festivities at the Castle was in itself a pregnant fact. But further,
the Germans had never before possessed old Sagan's confidence; his
dislike of the encroaching mammoth, whom the whole little nation feared,
was notorious. This new departure was therefore ominous.

'I had no notion that Baron von Elmur liked me any better than my
countrymen,' said Rallywood aloud.

'Ah, no, perhaps not; but now, you will understand, he wishes to please
me!' Countess Isolde answered with an air of mysterious importance.

'He is not alone in wishing to do that,' returned Rallywood, ashamed
even as he uttered it, of the meaningless compliment.

'Jack,' she said, with a proud raising of her blonde head, 'you are my
friend, and of course you wish to please me. But everyone will want to
stand well with me some day--when I have power--and then you shall see
what I will do for those whom I wish to please!'

Every word she spoke added to the certainty that some new plot was
afoot, and Rallywood glanced round for Counsellor's stout figure.

'You are glad to come to Sagan?' persisted his companion; 'say you are
glad.'

'I've never been more glad of anything in my life!' Rallywood replied
with truth, and then, his good angel rather than his mother's wit coming
to his rescue, he got away from the dancing-salon, and found Counsellor
at the entrance preparing to leave.

'I'll walk round with you, Major,' he proposed.

'I'm not going your way,' replied Counsellor. 'Besides, I wish to drive.
Hullo, you have got hold of my gloves!' and snatching at the
gloves--which happened to be Rallywood's--he thrust his own into the
young man's hand, saying in a low voice as he did so, 'Be on the
Cloister Bridge in half an hour. Good-night!'

At the appointed time, Rallywood, having replaced his military greatcoat
by one less remarkable, was waiting on the bridge, when he was accosted
by a hunchbacked fellow in a shabby Maäsaun sheepskin, who dropped a
rough English 'Good-night,' as he passed. Presently Rallywood followed
him until they came out into an open country road where the biting _tsa_
met them full face.

'This _tsa_ is deadly! Quick! what is it you have to tell me?' said
Counsellor's voice.

Rallywood answered in a few rapid sentences.

'Yes, I fancied something of the kind was due. What an inestimable
blessing it is that such women as the Countess Sagan exist--to satisfy
diplomatic curiosity! We must find out the precise limits of the German
game at the Castle of Sagan. It is lucky for you, John, my son, that
your duty as a Maäsaun soldier to the Maäsaun nation and as an
Englishman to your own, run in this instance on the same lines.'

'They always will.'

'Don't be too sure of that! There may come a day when your public and
your private honour will stand face to face, hopelessly irreconcilable.
What then?'

'When anything so extremely awkward comes to pass, I suppose I shall
have to make up my mind on the subject,' replied Rallywood with a lazy
yawn, 'in the meantime it is to much trouble. Just at present my part is
simple, and I look for the game to turn in our favor.'

Counsellor stood still, as if in consideration, for a minute.

'The stake may seem to be a small one--just this useless scrap of
country,' he said at length, 'but the issues are far-reaching, and
therefore all Europe is taking a hand in the game. How will it end? I
don't know! The Fates shuffle and men handle the cards, but God cuts!
Thirty years' experience has taught me that. I didn't believe it once--I
do now.'




CHAPTER VIII.

A QUESTION OF THE GUARD.


The really great strategist is not the man who loves an intricate plot.
His method is simple, he eliminates.

On a certain cold morning, when the sun shone pinkly through a sea-haze
over the glittering roofs of Révonde, a review of the Guard, and of a
few regiments that happened to be stationed within a short distance of
the capital, was to be held, in honour of the Duke's birthday, on the
spacious parade ground of the Guard, which occupied the whole of a small
plateau lying high between the beetling hills behind the barracks.

Baron von Elmur paid an early visit to the Chancellor on his way to the
review, and found M. Selpdorf, though brisk and urbane as ever, a little
difficult.

'We do not progress, Monsieur,' Elmur was saying.

'What would you, my dear Baron? we have so many obstacles in our path,'
answered the other, shrugging his shoulders good-humoredly.

Elmur leaned his elbow on the table.

'I know that delay can conduce to no good end,' he said. 'You have
agreed that a certain course is desirable no less for your country than
mine.'

'Have I agreed to that proposition? Not altogether! Remember, I cannot
be expected to see with German eyes.'

'Even to the most patriotic Maäsaun it must be evident that sooner or
later the State must fall to us; it is merely a question of time.'

'The time has already been long,' said the Chancellor softly.

'For an excellent reason: because we have not always been as now, a huge
bulk. The bulk of the new Empire must by force of gravitation attract
all the smaller bodies round to itself. It is by a miracle only that
Maäsau has stood alone so long.'

'And by another miracle she might go on standing alone a little longer.'

'This is not the age of miracles, my friend!'

'I remember also something which your Excellency forgets,' said
Selpdorf, with a touch of sadness in his voice, 'that there have been
Selpdorfs helping in this miracle of the independence of Maäsau for
generations.'

Elmur altered his attitude with an open impatience.

'You are a far-sighted patriot, Monsieur. It is needless to repeat that
if Maäsau joins the confederation of the Empire by her own act she will
do so on very different terms to any which could possibly be conceded to
a state that had forced upon us the unpleasant necessity of coercion.
Remember Frankfurt! She paid for her obstinacy. Whereas we are prepared
to deal generously towards those who cast in their lot with ours.
Besides,' he added significantly, 'I am urging you to consult not only
the interests of Maäsau, but your own also.'

'They are the same, and it is difficult to know where our true interest
lies,' said Selpdorf, thoughtfully. 'Do you go to the Castle of Sagan
next week?'

The abrupt change of subject seemed to have its effect upon Elmur. He
turned away from the table, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette in a
leisurely manner before he answered.

'Yes; and you, Monsieur?'

'I have no inclination for these gaieties; but my daughter goes.' Von
Elmur shot a glance at his companion.

'To repeat my own words--we do not progress, my dear Selpdorf.'

'So? Women finesse in these affairs. Valerie follows the custom of her
sex, and perhaps she has become a little spoilt by overmuch admiration.
Were she aware of your wishes, it would solve many of the present
doubts.'

'It takes two to make that especial kind of bargain,' said Elmur, with a
curious smile, 'one to ask, the other to grant. I am prepared to ask
when I am assured that my request will be favourably received. An
ambassador is esteemed in just the same degree as the country he
represents. If his country triumph he triumphs also.'

'In this case I might point out that your personal success,' the
Chancellor said airily, 'would be the best, shall I say the only
possible, preliminary to the success of the mission with which his
Imperial Majesty has charged you.'

Elmur drew in his lips slightly. Valerie, as the Baroness von Elmur, was
to be her father's guarantee for the future! Although Elmur's desires
lay in the same direction, Selpdorf's insistence was most unpalatable to
the German minister.

'I am ready to lay myself at Mademoiselle's feet,' he said aloud, 'but
there is always the picturesque young captain of the Guard.'

'Unziar? I can positively reassure your Excellency on that point.'

'Unziar? No! The Englishman--Rallywood.'

'Rallywood?' said the Chancellor in very real surprise, 'what of him?'

'Nothing beyond the fact that he has an aptitude for challenging fate.
Such men dazzle the eyes, and are consequently apt to be dangerous. Why
has he been placed in the Guard?'

'I placed him there to serve our mutual convenience,' replied Selpdorf.
'He is an Englishman, with his full share of English intolerance and
courage. On the other hand, the Guard resent the intrusion of
foreigners, neither are they--mild-mannered.'

Elmur considered.

'The chances were in favour of trouble certainly. Had there been trouble
Rallywood might have disposed of some of our chief difficulties for us,'
he remarked, with a cynical smile.

'He might also have been disposed of himself,' said Selpdorf, 'and he is
the one human being for whom the good Counsellor has the slightest
regard. In politics it is necessary to consider the personal equation.
To touch Counsellor in his weakest point would have been to alienate
England at the convenient moment.'

'All that might have been true'--Elmur shrugged his shoulders;
'unluckily we must face things as they actually are.'

'Even now Rallywood has his uses. The Guard is composed of the flower of
our nobility--they are not to be tempted. At least that is my opinion,
although I believe Count Sagan holds differently. But this Rallywood is
a soldier of fortune, a mercenary. You perceive?'

Elmur stroked his chin dubiously.

'I am very much afraid he belongs to the wrong breed. However, I would
wish to point out that it will be essential to carry through this matter
quickly. If the Duke could be persuaded to accept the scheme of
reversion, the whole arrangement would be completed before the world was
the wiser.'

'It is the simplest plan, and therefore the best. But what will England
say? Counsellor is here, that in itself speaks.'

'Neither England nor the good Counsellor can touch an accomplished fact.
As they say in their own idiom, "Possession is nine parts of the law."
It remains with us to make the fact.'

Selpdorf arose.

'Your Excellency will excuse me. It is time to start for the palace.
To-day his Highness the Duke holds a review of the Guard. I will if
possible sound him on the subject which interests us both. Should that
fail, we must consider the alternative scheme.'

Half-an-hour later the two men met again as they dismounted in the
courtyard of the palace. They approached each other courteously.

'There stands the real obstacle to our success,' said Elmur in a low
tone.

Selpdorf followed the German Minister's glance. Standing there, in the
fire-light of the guard-room, was the tall figure of Anthony Unziar,
waiting with haughty stiffness for the appearance of the Duke.

'His Highness's gentlemen, the Maäsaun Guard,' went on Elmur with a
bitter sneer, 'the impersonation of an arrogant militarism!'

'Seven--to be counted with,' corrected Selpdorf gently. 'The other, the
eighth----'

'Has the initial fault of nationality. However, he goes to Sagan.'

The mist cleared as the sun rose higher until, by noon, the sky was of
a pale radiant blue laced with a delicate broidery of white
wind-scattered clouds. Looking westward the dark river wound away to the
sea, ringed here and there by the highly decorated bridges of
light-toned granite peculiar to Maäsau. Révonde, in the sunshine, shone
in the colours of a moss-grown stone, gray and green, the twin ridges on
which it stood fretted and embossed to their summits with the palaces
and pinnacles, the spires and towers, and gardens of the spreading city.
The Grand Duke, as they rounded the mounting road to the parade ground,
looked back upon Révonde with a lingering glance. Selpdorf who was
seated opposite to him, had been replying to his grumbling questions as
to the condition of the royal exchequer with a depressing account of the
hopelessness of the situation.

'Révonde is a jewel after all!' said the Duke suddenly; 'a jewel can
always be mortgaged, Selpdorf.'

Selpdorf admitted that this was true, and also hinted that the jewel had
been used in one way or another pretty freely to raise the revenues for
a good many years, without giving much in the way of a _quid pro quo_,
beyond the vague hopes and airy promises which pledged the Maäsaun
government to little or nothing. But now, he explained, the Powers were
growing weary of so unprofitable a speculation, and were inclined to
expect some definite return for their assistance.

The Duke listened moodily, lying back on his cushions, a thin-legged,
paunchy figure, whose features had lost their shapely mould under the
touch of dissipation. The nose hung long and fleshy between the pouched
skin of his cheekbones, the eyes showed a tell-tale slackness in the
under eyelid, where it merged into the loose wrinkles below. The lower
part of the face was covered by a long but sparse moustache, through
which at times could be discerned that terrible protrusion of the upper
lip that seems the herald of senility. Yet Gustave, Grand Duke of
Maäsau, was only that day celebrating the completion of his
fifty-seventh year.

Where the carriage attained the level of the plateau, the main road
curved away inland to the right, while upon the left hand, under the
wall of encircling brown cliffs, a small brigade of all arms was
assembled to do honour to their ruler. Through a cut in the hills far
away, but seemingly nearer on that windy morning, could be seen a blue
open bay, blown into the 'innumerable laughter of the sea.' The air, the
whole scene, was inspiriting, but the Duke looked heavily on as the
troops deployed and turned, their arms glittering in the sunlight.

First in order came a couple of squadrons of the Frontier Cavalry, with
their black sheepskins hanging behind them; then infantry, followed by
two batteries of artillery divided by some more cavalry, and, after a
distinct interval, the Guard.

The little army was perfect in equipment and finish, and their uniforms
were brilliant and picturesque; but the Duke stared out of the
amphitheatre of the parade ground with dissatisfaction and _ennui_.
Money, he wanted money, and the less the Chancellor could encourage him
to hope for it the more he desired to have it by hook or by crook.

The Grand Marshal of Maäsau having been dismissed from the side of the
royal carriage with a few curt words, the Duke spoke again, in a low
tone to Selpdorf.

'Then you wish me to understand that there is no more to be got out of
anybody. I know better than that. England, Germany, and Russia, are
waiting to outbid each other.'

'That is true, sire; but they will not deal on the old terms.'

The Guard, with scattered pennons flying, were drawn up at the lower end
of the parade ground. The chief effect of the day was about to take
place--the charge of the Guard.

'I am now of an age,' remarked the Duke peevishly, 'when my birthdays
have ceased to be a cause for congratulation. This review is an
anachronism. In my father's time I rode at the head of the Guard, and
led a charge on the day I was eighteen. Pish! I have grown wiser, and
know how to enjoy life after a more rational fashion. To return to our
other subject--What do they want?'

Selpdorf smiled, and passed his fingers upwards over the erect corners
of his moustache.

'For example, there is a power that might pay a heavy annual sum if
your Highness would consent to disband your Guard!' he said, with a
tentative smile.

The slack fallen lines of the Duke's visage grew suddenly tense. His
eyes brightened as the tossing mass in green and gold swept down towards
them in a thunder of hoofs, and the long-drawn shout of 'Maäsau,' with
which the Guard have charged home on so many a battlefield.

As the splendid ranks of horsemen crashed past under a flashing play of
saluting swords, the Duke pulled himself erect in his carriage and
raised his gloved hand in acknowledgment with a strong fling of
enthusiasm that recalled to men present other and better days.

Selpdorf's brow lost its round smoothness for a short moment, but
cleared again before the Duke dropped back with a groan into his seat.

'Disband the Guard? What traitor suggested that? May the Guard shoot me
first! I'd rather rot of starvation than consent to it! For with the
Guard is bound up the freedom of Maäsau!'

Presently he turned upon the Chancellor with a glooming and suspicious
gaze.

'Has Sagan been tampering with you?' he asked, with a sneer, 'if he
tempted you now it would only be to betray you later! He hankers after
Maäsau, but remember my cousin in England. He has claims which cannot be
over-ridden.'

Selpdorf remained respectfully silent for a short time, revolving the
extremely important admission with regard to the second claimant to the
heritage of the Duchy, which the Duke in his excitement had made.

The first and simpler plan of persuading the Duke to enter into an
understanding with Germany, to the effect that she should enjoy the
reversion of Maäsau in exchange for the payment of a secured annuity,
was plainly hopeless. It now remained to put in motion the second
scheme, which contained elements of infinitely greater danger.

Human nature is a complex thing, yet each man's attitude of mind towards
himself, is often only an extension of his attitude of mind towards his
neighbour.

What the Chancellor said to himself to whitewash his conduct in his own
eyes, who can tell? The Duke, old vice-sodden reprobate as he was, had
that one remnant of manhood left, a determination to face the last and
most absolute contingency of life rather than sell his country.

Perhaps Selpdorf used that most guilty of all excuses--If I do not put
my hand to this thing someone else will. Maäsau must fall sooner or
later to some larger power. May not I profit by it as well as another?
Did he set his house of excuse upon the sand of a certain bitter
writing? 'I will persuade them,' said Satan--'I will make them two
idols, which they shall call Honour and Fidelity, and a law which shall
be called passive obedience. And they shall worship these idols!' If
Honour, Fidelity, and Obedience be idols, where then, are the true
gods?




CHAPTER IX.

THE CASTLE OF SAGAN.


The broadly flowing Kofn forms part of the north-eastern boundary of the
State of Maäsau. Its dark waters rush tumultuously from the gorge below
the Castle of Sagan, and fling a vast enclosing arm about the bleak
plains and marshes of which the wastes of the frontier consist.

It is a land where even summer dwells coldly.

To the north a chain of hills rises black against the sky, and there,
set upon a boldly jutting spur, the Castle of Sagan dominates the
inhospitable landscape like a frown upon a sinister face.

The whole spur and the hill behind it are rough with ragged pine-woods,
and, below, the banks shelve to the river with a broken scattering of
deciduous trees, that leave on the eye the chill impression of leafless
branches tangled against a background of grey and stony slopes.

Some two or three miles south of the Castle the river breaks across a
step-like outcrop of rock, and thus forms that famous ford, across which
the Counts of Sagan used in the old days to lead their foraging
expeditions over the border.

Simon of Sagan, the present Count, inherited in an unmodified degree
the more predatory and uncivilized instincts of his forefathers.
Illiterate, brutal, and cunning, the thin veneer laid by the nineteenth
century upon his coarse-grained nature was apt to rub off on the very
slightest friction, bringing the original savage to the surface.

He was at once the terror and the pride of the stolid, silent peasantry
that lived under his rule. A fierce and fearless sportsman, his
dependents delighted in boasting of the prowess of a master whose
capricious cruelties they never dreamed of resenting. With Sagan,
throughout life, to desire was to have, and in his pursuit of the
wished-for object, he was hampered by no new-fangled sentiments of
honour, truth, or loyalty. Like other savages he quickly tired of his
fancies when once gratified. Not four years ago he had been possessed by
a frantic passion for the beautiful young wife whom he had now come to
regard with something dangerously near hate.

In dealing with such a temperament as this both Elmur and Selpdorf were
well aware that they were handling an explosive that might at any moment
wreck their most carefully laid plans. They would very much have
preferred to have made a tool of the reigning Duke, but Selpdorf, who
had been plying him for more than a month with a ceaseless and
exhaustive course of innuendo, discouragement, and veiled temptation,
was at length convinced, by the Duke's reply on the day of the review,
that nothing further was to be hoped for in that direction.

For this reason the German party was obliged to fall back on Count
Sagan. That he was untrammelled by principle, and was, moreover,
prepared to meet them half-way, rendered their schemes no whit safer.
The only hope of security lay in clinching the matter as quickly as it
was possible to do so. Once the German grasp had been fairly laid upon
the State, the nominal sovereign might struggle as he liked, he could
hurt no one but himself.

M. Selpdorf's chief contribution towards the new plot--which was to be
carried out at the Count's own fortress, the Castle of Sagan--consisted
in sending an urgent letter after his daughter, begging her to fall in
with von Elmur's wishes.

Valerie received the letter in Madame de Sagan's apartments. The
Countess lay on a couch, reading a French novel and yawning.

'What a devoted papa!' she exclaimed, glancing up.

Valerie did not immediately reply. She was standing at the deep embayed
window that looked out towards the river and the apparently endless
desolation beyond. She only moved very slightly, thereby turning her
back even more completely upon her companion. The girl had not lived so
long in an atmosphere of diplomacy without learning the wisdom of
keeping her own counsel.

She had for some time been aware of Baron von Elmur's admiration, but
only of late had he seemed anxious to make his aspirations manifest to
the public--a much more significant fact. For the German was in one way
a universal admirer, he made qualified love to most of the good-looking
ladies about the Court, and also, perhaps, more pointedly, to some who
were not so good-looking, thus gaining much profit and some pleasure.
His high-shouldered, portly, personable figure, his handsome face with
its close-set narrow eyes, rose before Valerie's mental eye. Her future
husband? How absurd, how impossible! And she suddenly laughed a soft,
throaty ripple of laughter.

Isolde moved noiselessly, and coming behind Valerie, caught her by the
shoulders and swung her half round.

'What are you laughing at?' she asked over the girl's shoulder.

Valerie moved away gently from under the slender hands.

'Can you imagine yourself in love with Baron von Elmur?' she asked.

'Were you laughing at that?' inquired the other incredulously.

'Yes,' with another little laugh.

'Ah! the devoted papa has been writing of Baron von Elmur?' said the
Countess, with an arch smile.

'But, I can understand being in love with von Elmur! He is--difficult.
Men no longer in their first youth are much the more interesting. The
love of a young man is simple, he says what he means; but when he grows
older it is not so. By that time he has gathered memories,
enlightenment, experiences; and he begins by thinking he knows one
through and through. And why?--because he knows other women--and them
how imperfectly! As if we were not as various as the colours in the old
Sagan diadem! Each woman is made differently, and each reflects her own
colour. To teach a man--old enough to appreciate it--this little fact
about ourselves is, I assure you, never a dull amusement.'

Valerie paused before she spoke.

'Now I know why you are married, Isolde!'

'Ah, yes; but I was too young to realize that Sagan is a bear who cannot
be taught to dance. I had just left school. I could not choose. But you,
Valerie, you have a future before you! Poor Anthony, like all other
young men, is desperately in earnest, he gives one the blues. I know he
already bores you; but von Elmur----Ah, that is altogether another
affair!'

Madame de Sagan sank down beside a little buhl-table, and tapped on it
impatiently with her slight fingers. Against the light of the afternoon
glow she watched the outline of Valerie's cheek. For Mdlle. Selpdorf had
returned to her contemplation of the landscape. A curl of blue smoke
from among the trees on the nearer bank of the Kofn held her gaze and
suggested thoughts, which she was taking up one by one, as it were, and
examining soberly enough.

Rallywood had been stationed at Kofn Ford when first Isolde made his
acquaintance. The girl recalled a description she had heard of the tall
young Englishman galloping along the flat road to the rescue of the
pretty, terrified Countess, whose Arab had been merely cantering along,
capering now and again from sheer light-heartedness and without
malicious intent, until its timid rider chose to scream, when it reared
and started with flying hoofs towards the marshes. Valerie went on to
picture Rallywood holding the trembling woman on her saddle till her
escort and grooms overtook them, and at the picture the girl's lip
curled and quivered with angry scorn--of a sudden she hated and despised
them both, but especially she despised Rallywood for having succumbed to
Isolde's shallow beauty! Thus it will be seen that Mdlle. Selpdorf was
inclined to under-rate Madame de Sagan's points. Isolde was not only
wonderfully pretty, but she was endowed with a superficial cleverness,
and kindliness and tact, all of which rendered her irresistible to nine
men out of ten. A moral chameleon, Isolde almost always believed in
herself and her own moods, therefore it was little wonder that the men
whose phases of humour she reflected believed in her also, and moreover
thought her as adorable and as full of delicious changes as Cleopatra.

Isolde had told the story of her adventure to Valerie, dwelling on the
facts that the hero detested--absolutely detested--all other women, also
that in physique he followed the most approved English pattern, and was
an exceptionally good specimen at that. Altogether Valerie had found the
description sufficiently attractive to induce her to pay Rallywood that
coquettish little visit in the ante-room of the Hôtel du Chancelier.

While these things passed through her thoughts her eyes were still fixed
upon the blue plume of smoke that rose and melted over Kofn Ford, for
its position indicated the whereabouts of the block-house used by the
Frontier Patrol, and there Rallywood had lived during the early part of
his acquaintance with Isolde.

'What are you thinking of?' inquired Madame de Sagan suddenly; then, as
Valerie made no immediate answer, she added, 'Shall I tell you,
Valerie?'

The other turned, with the pink of sunset lighting up her pale face.

'I don't imagine you can guess,' she said, with a faint smile.

Madame de Sagan's little trill of laughter was not quite so childish and
irresponsible as usual.

'But I can. You were thinking of Rallywood. You think rather often of
Rallywood, my dear girl.'

The guess, so near the truth, startled Valerie, although she gave no
sign. What could have suggested such an idea to Isolde? Instantly
Valerie was on the defensive. Her delicate nostrils quivered slightly,
and her hand--a larger and more capable hand than Isolde's--closed more
firmly upon her father's letter, as she replied, with that firm
directness which was so surprising a trait in her father's daughter:--

'Yes, I was thinking of him--and you. The block-house where he lived is
down there, I can see the smoke. That reminded me of it all. By the way,
Isolde, it seems that some young men have a shade of interest about
them.'

'This one is rather unlike all the others,' returned Madame de Sagan,
with gravity. 'He saved my life, and, well, he is different to anybody
else. He assumes nothing.'

It is a fact worthy of consideration that while a man rarely establishes
a claim on a woman by rendering her a service, a woman always
establishes a claim on a man by being rendered a service. Perhaps this
is as it should be.

'No,' repeated Valerie, thoughtfully, 'he certainly assumes--nothing.'

'What do you mean by that, Valerie?' exclaimed Isolde irritably. 'You
are in one of your incomprehensible moods to-day. What do you think of
Rallywood?'

'I hardly know what to think yet. Very likely I shall never come to any
conclusion about him. He is not my affair, and what can be more
uninteresting than a man who has saved some other woman's life?' She
laughed. 'You have recommended von Elmur to my notice--I shall certainly
spend my time to more profit in studying him.'

A servant entered.

'His Excellency Baron von Elmur wishes to wait upon your ladyship.'

Elmur advanced bowing. After greeting his hostess, he turned to Valerie
with a manner that was new in their intercourse. He dropped from the
courtier to the man pure and simple.

Kissing the girl's hand he said earnestly:

'I feared you were not to arrive until to-morrow.'

Madame de Sagan, who had raised her eyebrows and made a little grimace
at Valerie behind the Minister's back, here interposed:

'I persuaded her to travel here with me. I hope, Baron, you feel how
greatly I have befriended you!'

'You will find me grateful, Madame. In the meantime, I have been sent to
warn you that his Highness has already arrived at the foot of the hill,
and to beg you to descend to the great hall, where the Count is waiting
to receive him.'

'Come, Valerie,' said the Countess, with a little catch in her breath,
and an added fleck of colour in her soft cheeks.

The great hall was half-filled with servants and retainers, ranged
according to the fashion, which has obtained at Sagan during the memory
of man, for the ceremonious reception of the reigning Duke. Half a dozen
huntsmen held in leash as many couples of huge boarhounds at one side of
the hall; on the other, servants, carrying gold trays of refreshments,
stood in line. Above these, again, clustered the numerous guests who had
already arrived.

As the Countess, looking very young and fair and slender, walked down
the centre, Sagan, who had been draining a goblet of wine, thrust the
cup back upon the tray, and catching his wife's hand roughly, said, with
an audible oath:

'You're late.'

She shrank back, suppressing a cry, from his angry grasp; but few had
time to notice the incident, for the outer door clanged back upon its
hinges to admit the Duke, who, shivering in his furs, entered upon the
arm of Colendorp.

Sagan advanced to meet him, but the Duke, glancing round the hall with a
shudder, cut his formal greetings short.

'Sagan wears a more gloomy and cut-throat air than ever, Cousin,' he
said, irritably.

Sagan's response was covered by the entrance of the suite, the whole
party being brought up by Rallywood and a couple of troopers of the
Guard. Then Sagan, with a scowling face, offered the Duke the customary
cup of wine, and, comparative silence being restored, the ducal answer
came peevishly to all ears:

'No, my good Simon, your wine is like yourself, rather too strong and a
trifle rough for my taste. Let Briot be called. I have brought my own
drinking.'

So saying, he waved the attendants aside, and, approaching Isolde, he
raised her as she curtsied deeply.

'There is one point, Madame, in which I can never hope to rival my
cousin of Sagan. My wine may be more palatable; but I could never find a
wife more beautiful or--more wise than his!' he said, with malicious
gallantry.

Then bending forward he kissed the Countess with empressment on both
cheeks. She trembled under the caress, though she was hardly aware of
it, for her eyes were on her husband, whose daily increasing dislike of
herself she could not understand, and was only newly beginning to dread.
Valerie, standing immediately behind the Countess, overheard and
resented the details of the scene. It was unbearable to see Isolde
helplessly baited by Sagan and the Duke--each man gratifying the spleen
of the moment at the expense of a woman, who was obliged to submit to
their discourtesy. Of all the guests Mdlle. Selpdorf alone stood erect,
forgetting, in her indignation, to join in the general obeisance. The
Grand Duke, looking up, found her flushed and flashing, and
superlatively handsome. His flabby cheeks twitched, and his bleared eyes
brightened.

'Mademoiselle Selpdorf, since you will not salute me, I can at least
claim the right as your Duke to salute you,' he said, stepping towards
her.

Instantly Valerie sank into an exaggerated curtsy, thus adroitly
avoiding the Duke's outstretched hand and ready lips. His feeble legs
failed, he stumbled forward and pitched into the arms of Elmur, who set
him upright with a gentle skilfulness that almost cheated the eyes of
the spectators.

The Duke, slightly shaken, and exceedingly annoyed, turned upon the
girl:

'Mademoiselle grows proud!'

'Forgive me, sire; I did not dream that you would stoop so low!'
rejoined the girl, with apparent humility.

'If you will not accept the salute of your Duke, Mademoiselle, may I ask
to what you aspire?' he added contemptuously.

Valerie was not of a meek spirit, and she saw a way in which she might
revenge Isolde, little comprehending the far-reaching consequences of
her thoughtless words.

'I aspire to be maid of honour to the Grand Duchess of Maäsau!' she
answered, with a glance towards the Countess.

The Duke glared around him into the circle of half-curious,
half-terrified faces, for this was a piercing home-thrust, his eye dwelt
for a moment on Sagan, towering tall and rugged and strong as one of his
own native rocks, and he recognised that his cousin, although ten years
his senior as age is counted, was infinitely younger in his unimpaired
energies and rude health. Also, Duke Gustave of Maäsau was
superstitious, and it struck him as an ill omen that the representative
of Selpdorf should have failed him at the critical moment, and thus
flung him headlong into the arms of Germany!

Out of all these crowding thoughts arose not only vivid fear, but a
resolution, of which none at that time believed him to be capable. He
grew white about the mouth, his protruding lip twitched ominously.

'It is not always lucky for even so young and beautiful a woman as you
are to count on dead men's shoes,' he said, in a low, penetrating voice.

A happy inspiration came to Madame de Sagan. She took Valerie's hand in
hers, and addressed the Duke with a quivering smile that somehow vouched
for her earnestness at the moment.

'You mistake Valerie, sire; she and I both desire the same honour--to
attend your Highness's Consort, if it would please you to take one.'

'It might please me, Madame; but I doubt it would please your husband
little,' retorted the Duke.

'I hoped your Highness knew me better!' protested Sagan sulkily.

'I do, my good Simon, I know you much better!' said the Duke laughing.
'Now, pray lead me to my apartments. The journey to Sagan fatigues in
this weather--and, after all, it would look better if I died at home--in
the palace at Révonde.'

At a glance from Elmur, Sagan motioned his wife forward.

'I will lead you to your apartments, sire,' she said, offering the Duke
her slender hand. 'I am sure that the air of Sagan is as loyal as
ourselves, and will do for you all that we should wish it to do.'

For answer the Duke shook his head feebly; and, calling Colendorp to his
side, passed up the long hall through a rustling silence.




CHAPTER X.

COUNT SIMON OF SAGAN.


Although secretly dismayed at the effect produced by her rash
championship of Madame de Sagan, Valerie kept up a semblance of
self-possession. Her clear colouring faded to extreme pallor, but her
proud eyes showed no sign of shrinking from the curious glances cast
upon her. She caught a trenchant aside from Sagan to Elmur:

'These cursed women will ruin us!'

And in answer to this even Elmur's flattery was mute. But Valerie stood
haughty and erect, watching the Duke's suite file up the hall,
Rallywood, as before, bringing up in the rear.

As he came in line with her he turned his head, and their glances met.

That look, which she always recalled as distinctively his, was wiped
from the young man's gray eyes; they fell upon her stern, alienated,
almost inimical. The change struck her like a blow. But before she could
fling back her silent defiance at him, he was gone, without a second
glance, or seeking in any manner to soften the insolent rebuke he had
dared to convey.

She resolved to go to her own rooms and make instant arrangements for a
return to Révonde. Her heart was hot in her, as, looking round, she
found herself standing alone. Elmur, apparently forgetful of the deep
personal devotion he had so lately manifested, was conversing with a
group of Maäsaun nobles, his back turned conveniently towards her. Sagan
had disappeared, and not one of those whom she knew so well, and who,
ten minutes ago, would have felt honoured by seeking her, but now seemed
too deeply engaged to notice that she stood alone.

A moment later Counsellor approached her. She had known him slightly for
a long time, but she now for the first time fully met the shrewd, kindly
eyes under their shaggy brows. Instantly she liked him, and to her own
surprise found herself talking of the indiscretion of which she had been
guilty, and of her wish to return to Révonde in consequence.

'Mademoiselle, are you a loyal Maäsaun?' asked Counsellor gravely.

Valerie's soft dark eyes gazed steadily back into his.

'I am loyal,' she replied, in an earnest under-breath.

'Then stay in Sagan. If your words carried so long a tag of meaning to
others, you can see that Maäsau may have need of all her loyal children
soon.'

'Whom can we trust?' she asked suddenly, almost in a whisper, for Elmur,
seeing her in conversation with Counsellor, now approached with a
ceremonious air.

Counsellor smiled as he stood squarely beside her.

'Choose!' he said, briefly.

'Choose what?' asked Elmur in his most deferential manner.
'Madamoiselle's choice in the most trivial matters is of importance.'

Valerie smiled. Not a trace of disturbance was perceptible in her
manner, and Elmur, noting it, came to the final conclusion that this
girl was not only extraordinarily handsome, but also exceptionally
capable. Having made so grievous a mistake, and taken the punishment of
it, she was still mistress of herself. It was a gallant spirit, and well
worth capturing.

'Major Counsellor has asked me to choose flowers for the ball to-night.
I choose roses. I think it is very nice of me, Major Counsellor, for is
not the rose the emblem of England?' said the girl, with a coquettish
smile at the older man.

Elmur's face clouded. This interfering old fellow had the power of
making friends, which means the power of being a dangerous enemy.

'I had hoped,' he said aloud, 'to have the pleasure of begging
Mademoiselle to accept my flowers.'

'You are too late, Baron; but perhaps you will escort me to the west
tower, where I daresay Madame de Sagan is already waiting for me.'

Counsellor looked after the tall graceful figure of the girl as she
ascended the staircase with Elmur at her side. He could see she was
still laughing and talking to her companion, but her ready parry of the
German's question, including a clear reply to his own, showed him that
the Chancellor's daughter was much more than a mere wilful girl.

'John Rallywood,' he grunted, as he turned away, 'is after all not so
great an ass as he thinks himself.'

An attendant intercepted the German before he regained the hall, after
leaving Valerie with Madame de Sagan.

'My lord desires to speak with your Excellency,' he said.

Elmur frowned. He wished to allow Count Simon time to cool before
meeting him, but this summons was imperative, and, besides, he knew the
danger of failing to provide a safety-valve in the shape of a listener,
before the Count could blow off the first ebullitions of rage over
Mdlle. Selpdorf's untoward speech. If pent up within his own breast,
there was no knowing in how disastrous a manner Sagan's ill-humour might
explode. Defeat meant much to Elmur, his reputation was at stake. Other
men had undertaken this same mission--to bring about the annexation to
the Fatherland of this troublesome little state; they had failed,
therefore Elmur had pledged himself to succeed.

Elmur stood with his back against a massive carved bookshelf, and looked
at Sagan, who, with a cigar-butt buried in his ragged beard, was
walking, with long, uncertain steps, up and down the floor. The tiger
in the old man was awake.

'Act I., Scene I.,' said Elmur at last, and with a smile.

Sagan stopped short and turned a bloodshot sidelong glare upon him, his
dark old fingers working convulsively.

'By heaven! It is going to be a tragedy!' he shouted, and burst into a
whirlwind of hideous curses, coupled with the names of Valerie and his
wife.

The German picked out a comfortable chair and seated himself, crossing
his legs with a manifest intention of patience. There was a horrible
energy in the old man's attitudes. His long smouldering ambition, nursed
and fed of late, had now flamed into a regnant passion, and the cooler,
more wary, unscrupulousness of the younger man looked with repugnance
upon the blind fury of the Duke that was to be.

In no great space of time the sight of that impassive, high-shouldered
figure, sitting calmly by, imposed a growing sense of restraint upon the
Count.

'What do you think of our chances now that Gustave's suspicions have
been set on the alert?' he asked at last, coming to a stop in front of
Elmur. 'That fool of a wife of mine has blabbed to Selpdorf's daughter,
and she in her turn blabs before all the world.'

Elmur sat still and dumb. His face enraged Sagan once more.

'But I am master in Sagan. The girl must be got rid of! There are a
hundred dangers in our mountains and marshes. Do you not understand?'

Baron von Elmur stood up. He bore his most dignified air, and there was
something in his whole aspect that made the Count pause.

'In the first place, her death under the circumstances would look
strange. In the second, we have nothing to gain from it,' he said.

Sagan's red eyes twinkled cunningly.

'Hear my plan. I am not so squeamish as you thin-blooded moderns, or at
least as you pretend to be!' He placed his finger on the Minister's
breast, and drew back a little, the better to enjoy the approbation he
expected to read in the other's face. 'We will say that the girl fell
ill, and I, in my anxiety, sent Madame Sagan--my own wife, mark you--to
accompany her to Révonde. If both should happen to be killed by an
accident we should be well rid of them--and what could the world say?'

Elmur drew away from the insistive finger with an unmistakable movement.
He bowed stiffly and moved towards the door.

'I do not know what the world might do or say but I can answer for
Ludwig von Elmur. My master does not deal in murder, my lord, and so I
beg your leave to withdraw.'

'What?' sneered the other, 'he does not deal in murder? Rather, you
would say, he prefers to deal in murder wholesale! What of your wars and
annexations? What of the Germans in West Africa? Take care, Elmur, that
you are not acting over hastily. For my part I don't believe that a life
or so would weigh too heavy in the balance as against a province, even
in your master's judgment. I take my world as I find it, my good Baron!'

'Pardon me, my lord, you take the world as your ancestors found it! You
may be all your fathers were, but however time goes at Sagan, the rest
of the world has not stood still since the middle ages. And the world is
on my side to-day. Besides,' he added more suavely, 'we should gain
nothing. We should alienate Selpdorf, who is useful, and who knows too
much. As for the Duke, after such an affair he could never be eased of
his suspicions.'

'I don't ask to ease him, I mean to cure him,' retorted Sagan,
meaningly.

'I am certain Madame de Sagan has been silent. The speech of Mdlle.
Selpdorf was the indignant outburst of a girl who thought her friend
discourteously treated.'

'Discourteously treated? Isolde rudely treated? By whom?'

'Forgive me once more, my lord; but, in the first place, by yourself.'

Sagan laughed aloud; his ill-temper vanishing before the humour of the
notion that anyone could take exception to a man's rudeness towards his
own wife.

'Pooh! the girl is a bigger idiot than I thought her. Let us hope she'll
never meet with worse at the hands of her own husband.'

'I join in the hope, my lord, since I am to be that most fortunate man!'
It was not the most felicitous moment, but Elmur was aware that in no
other way could he assure Valerie's safety against the treachery of his
colleague.

Sagan fell back a step.

'So--the wind blows from that quarter? Take heed, Baron, Selpdorf is a
slippery fish.'

'But by this arrangement we land him finally.'

'It may be so.' Sagan tugged broodingly at his beard, after a pause
adding, 'Well, well, the girl is safe enough for me, if you can answer
for her. Come back and sit down. We must act while Gustave is here. Once
we secure the Guard, we can force him to do--as we please. First a
compromise, then abdication, then--' he brought his hand down heavily
upon the table and sat staring before him at a vision of a dream
fulfilled--a vision of Duke Simon of Maäsau.

Elmur's lip curled as he watched the man, who, for the time being, was
oblivious of all but the realisation of his own ambition. Duke Simon! a
name, but never a living power--only a German puppet, pulled hither and
thither at will by the controlling hand.

'What are your plans, my lord?' he asked aloud.

The Count started, and raised his head.

'We have three of the Guard here--Unziar, Rallywood, Colendorp. You know
that as soon as we have made sure of their officers the men will follow
of themselves. Now Unziar is no saint.'

'But he fights the better because he is a sinner.'

'He is not to be tempted, then. But he is in love with Mdlle.
Selpdorf--with your future wife, and she must blind him. A man in love
is easily blinded.'

'And Rallywood?' asked Elmur.

'We don't--want Rallywood,' rejoined Sagan, with an odd glance at Elmur.
'I can manage him, if you will leave him to me.'

Elmur smiled.

'I conclude Rallywood is capable of taking care of himself.'

The Count grinned.

'Exactly what I believed you would think. There remains only Colendorp.
But Colendorp is the man we must have--all will depend on Colendorp.'

'Do you suppose he will bend?'

'If not he must break! But, no; I know him well! I have chosen him
because he touches no woman! Men who don't love women, love money, and
men who do----'

'Love both,' said Elmur quietly.

'To-morrow night Colendorp shall be here with me. You also will be
present. Colendorp is a poor man--as men go in the Guard--and we must
approach him softly and by degrees,' said Sagan.

Elmur concealed a smile. A course of softness and caution seemed
impossible in connection with the headstrong old man who counselled it.

Sagan, left alone, stood engrossed in thought. The wild beast instinct
in him gave him intuition of danger. Elmur was playing Germany's game,
but since his aim was the Count's own, it was impossible at this stage
to disentangle the precise cause of suspicion.




CHAPTER XI.

A COUNSEL OF EXPEDIENCY.


The foundation of the family and Castle of Sagan was said to belong to
the period of the Frankish incursions. Some one had once remarked that
Count Simon himself was the most perfect relic of the barbaric period to
be found in Europe, which, coming round in due time to Count Simon, the
joker paid with his life for his poor attempt at wit.

However true this tradition of Sagan might be, the Castle itself was
mediæval, and, though it had been added to and restored, dark and
tortuous passages still existed in the older portion of its huge bulk,
and could by no means be improved away. Treacherous steps waylaid and
betrayed the unwary foot; undreamed-of doors gave upon their dimmest
corners, and not all the efforts of the nervous châtelaine ever
accomplished the adequate lighting of their recesses.

The spirit of fear seemed to be abroad in the Castle that night, and the
guests moved with a causeless but irresistible hurry when coming or
going from the upper apartments or through the winding corridors.

Valerie was conscious of it, as, wrapped in a long cloak, she opened
her door and started back on finding a tall high-shouldered figure
standing outside.

'Take my arm, Mademoiselle, I beg of you,' von Elmur bent his head,
speaking urgently: 'I am aware that his August Impertinence well
deserved your rebuke! But many heard it, and by some a sinister
construction has been put upon it. For your father's sake, will you
condescend to listen to me?'

Valerie withdrew her hand from his arm with a swift movement, but he
caught and replaced it almost roughly.

'Forgive me, Mademoiselle, you must listen to me! I am not urging my
suit upon you--I will not urge it until you consult your father; but, in
the meantime, the exigencies of the case, difficulties which have arisen
as the result of your own words, make it essential for you to follow my
advice. You are aware, you must be aware, of my feelings towards you,
and may I remind you that your father's wishes coincide with mine? Will
you allow me to announce our betrothal to the Count? I will never
presume upon this favour in the future--you may rely upon me. Valerie,
you see I am using no lover's persuasiveness, I do not tell you that I
adore you--though you are well aware of that! I only declare that your
falling in with my request may mean the difference between life and
death to some of us!'

'Is my father in danger through my fault?'

His hand held hers close, and she could see that he was moved out of the
common by some emotion, the cool stillness of his manner was replaced by
a passion of which she had not believed him capable. Her beauty and the
thought of losing her had a good deal to do with this disturbance, but
the chief cause was the fear, that, after all, his mission might fail,
and fail badly.

'I cannot explain; but I implore you to act on my advice.'

Valerie hesitated. Elmur was very much in earnest, yet it might be an
attempt to trick her into a position from which she would find it almost
impossible to withdraw.

'Do you wish to make this public?' she asked.

'No, no. That--pardon me once more--would be equally fatal after the
impression you unluckily conveyed to the Duke. No; I only ask you to
allow Count Sagan to believe that you have consented to become my wife.
I beg you to do this--for M. Selpdorf's sake, and, indeed, Mademoiselle,
for your own!'

As they entered the circle of brilliant light falling from the great
lamp above Madame de Sagan's door Baron von Elmur resumed something of
his usual manner.

'Then I may conduct you no further?' he said, turning in front of her to
screen her agitated face from two persons who were coming along the
gallery.

'Thank you for your protection, Baron,' the girl replied in an audible
tone, 'the Castle is haunted on nights like these, when the _tsa_ cries
around it.'

The door swung open noiselessly beside them, and Count Sagan stood on
the threshold. By some instinct, without looking at him, she seemed to
see his angry, questioning gaze.

'Au revoir,' she added to Elmur, with a coquettish ring in her voice.

'Ah, Mademoiselle, I live for that only--to see you again,' began Elmur.

Sagan cut him short.

'Tut, tut, Baron, too many eyes are looking on to permit of such
endearments as these! Ardour in a betrothed lover is natural, yet----'

Valerie looked up and smiled miserably.

'Au revoir,' she repeated faintly.

With that the door closed behind her as Sagan led her away to his wife,
and Elmur, affecting not to see the two men who were passing, strolled
on singing a love-song under his breath. Unziar paused, then drew
Rallywood with him into the centre of the wide lighted passage, where
they could speak with more freedom. 'That settles more questions than
one!' he said mockingly. 'For example, it settles a question which most
concerns you and me, Rallywood.'

'Concerns me?' Rallywood flung back the words.

'Would you deny it? You are as deep in that as I,' nodding towards the
door behind them.

Rallywood's answer came slowly.

'I do not deny it. Why should I wish to? Though regard for her has led
me to attempt to hide my--folly. I see I have not been altogether as
successful as I hoped. But, had I anything to offer her beside my sword,
I'm hanged if I would let that infernal German have her!'

'In these affairs, my friend, the ladies equally make choice,' Unziar
replied with a sneer. 'Besides, it is only a part of the--plot,' the
last word was scarcely audible.

Rallywood turned on him a long, keen look.

'And you think that she, Mademoiselle, is in it?' he asked at last.

'I wish to God I could say not! But in the teeth of this conspiracy, for
the sake of Maäsau, we of the Guard cannot lie to each other.'

Rallywood, being on duty during the evening, stood, according to usage,
at some little distance behind the Duke's chair. From among the coming
and going, from chance words and prepared speeches he gathered a thread
of suspicion which had its use in the perplexing future that was rapidly
advancing upon them.

Valerie, with a flush upon her face, was looking unusually brilliant as
she talked for a while with Unziar, who, judging from the sourness of
his smile, may have been offering her his congratulations.

Counsellor came up to Rallywood, and as they stood well away from the
crowd, spoke openly.

'You have heard the news I see, John, and you are not nearly such a fool
as you think yourself. She is a girl in ten thousand, and may, not
improbably, make the exceptional woman I once before spoke to you about.
I knew this connection was under consideration by Elmur, but the
engagement did not exist a few hours ago, and the present moment is
precisely the most inopportune which could be chosen for its
announcement, hence it follows that someone has forced Elmur's hand, or
that he is forcing the hand of someone, it may be Mdlle. Selpdorf's.'

'Will it be announced--publicly? The Duke, for example.'

'It is known already to half-a-dozen; what can they do? I had it from
Blivinski, the little Russian _attaché_, as a secret. Russia is, like
nature herself, the vast reservoir of all secrets; and not one is
allowed to escape, except for a purpose. Yet I wonder how it will end.
Look at her! How brilliant she is. But rouge on the cheek of a woman who
habitually uses none means, in all cases--trouble,' said Counsellor, as
he moved off.




CHAPTER XII.

ANTHONY UNZIAR.


No one could have gathered, from the quiet aspect of Rallywood's tall,
soldierly figure, that a whirl of emotion was passing through his brain.
Yet above all rose one dominant sensation--a vast relief. Counsellor
shared his own opinion with regard to Valerie. Her daring words to the
Duke had no serious meaning; they were only the natural echo of a girl's
preference for a young and beautiful woman to preside over the Court,
rather than the bloated rake who now lolled uneasily in the chair before
him. He recalled the forlorn little smile with which she had accepted
von Elmur's lover-like protestations at Madame de Sagan's doorway. Its
forlornness had been lost upon Unziar, who had drawn but one merciless
conclusion from the little scene. Close on the heels of these
reflections a vivid recollection rose before Rallywood's mind of the
first night he had met her. The lights and music of the grand salon of
Sagan died away, and he was standing again on the ridge below the Hôtel
du Chancelier, looking out over the glimmering lamps of Révonde,
dominated, as always, by the regnant red eye of the Guards' Dome, and he
felt once more that strange new warmth and thrill in his veins which,
at the time, he had believed to be born of an opening career beset with
danger and difficulty. To-night, however, he judged more clearly; he
knew that his dull life had been rekindled, and his ambitions had taken
fresh fire from the dark starlit eyes Valerie Selpdorf had raised to his
in the Counsellor's ante-room two months ago.

'Captain Rallywood!'

Rallywood started. The Duke made him a sign to approach. Then, rising
from his chair, he took the young man's arm, and leaning heavily upon
it, moved towards the card-room, meeting Unziar with Mdlle. Selpdorf on
the way.

'Hey, Mademoiselle Valerie,' he stopped abruptly, 'would you teach my
Guards treason?'

'To teach your Highness's Guards treason is impossible!' replied
Valerie, with a slight lifting of her proud head.

'The influence of a beautiful woman has no limit,' retorted the Duke.

Valerie's red lips trembled.

'Generations have already proved the fidelity of the Selpdorfs has also
no limit. But I beg you to accept an apology for my foolish words.'

'But such words from a Selpdorf!'

'We have always been loyal, sire.'

The Duke shook his head sadly.

'But the world changes--what has been is not. And the first reason
now-a-days why a thing should no longer be, is the fact that once it
was!'

Valerie was almost as tall as the Duke himself, and she looked level
into his weary eyes.

'Have we changed with the world, sire?'

'Not--yet,' replied the Duke bitterly; then, struck, as it seemed, by
the intrinsic spirit of the young imperial face gazing into his own, he
added, 'Though you tempt a man to believe in you, Mademoiselle!'

'I say this before your Highness and these gentlemen of your Guard,'
Valerie said, her eyes flashing. 'May the Selpdorf, who ceases to be
true to your Highness and to Maäsau, die!'

In after time events brought back the vehement words to the minds of the
three who heard them.

'And I say, "Amen!"' The Duke took her hand and added, 'Which proves,
Valerie, that you have conquered your old friend, Gustave of Maäsau.
Come, Captain Rallywood, half-an-hour's play, and then to bed.'

Valerie looked up at Unziar as she walked beside him.

'And yet you would not believe me?'

'Come!' was Unziar's reply.

She laid her hand within his arm and passed silently through the
reception rooms beside him.

She felt that the time had come when Unziar could no more be put off by
the little wiles and evasions a woman employs who has nothing to give to
the man who loves her but a definite answer. Two luxurious chairs stood
ready for occupants in the nook to which he led her, but he had no
thought to give to conventionalities. He stood before her keen and
white, and desperate with doubt.

'Valerie, what does all this mean?'

Though only a girl in years, Valerie was a woman in experience.
Experience, not gained altogether at first hand, be it understood, but
such as a clever woman easily gathers from the lives of those about her.
As the motherless daughter of M. Selpdorf, she had had exceptional
opportunities. Thrown into the midst of a brilliant but vicious society,
her eyes had seen more of the bare under-texture of life than was
perhaps desirable; she had looked upon the shift and drift of things
political with an ever-present knowledge that there danger lurked and
waited; she had learned the uses of reserve, and something of the art of
resource; and, above all, her womanly perceptions had taken on a strange
edge of sensitive power, due to her father's quaint methods of pointing
out to her the difference between the seeming and the true. By reason of
this premature insight into the motives and stress of human existence
she gained in safety and strength as her father desired; but on the
other hand, she had lost the sense of happy irresponsibility that goes
so far towards making up one of the sweetest essentials of youth.
Luckily there is one thing which can never be quite destroyed at
secondhand--the romance and illusions that beguile boyhood and girlhood,
and the liability to be so beguiled still lived in Valerie's strong and
vivid nature.

'Shall I swear that every word I spoke to the Duke just now is true?'
she asked coldly. 'Although, of course, even that would not convince
you!'

'No, I suppose not,' he said drearily. 'You spoke openly of your hope to
be maid of honour to Madame de Sagan when she became Duchess of
Maäsau--which can only mean one thing. Rallywood heard and told me
exactly.'

'You discussed me with Captain Rallywood?' she flashed out.

Unziar's glance darkened again with a new suspicion.

'Should you object?' he asked.

'As it happens, I should, particularly.'

He bit savagely at his moustache.

'What is wrong with Rallywood?'

'He is an Englishman. Besides, I do not care to be discussed amongst the
men of the Guard!'

'How like a woman you put me off! I did not discuss you with Rallywood,
of course, as you very well know. I asked him the single question as to
what had actually been said. I knew he would not lie to me.'

'The Guard keep their falsehoods for outsiders, I suppose?'

Unziar liked this harping upon Rallywood less and less. He moved
irritably.

'But that is not all. You have admitted that you are going to marry
Elmur. That also signifies--something.'

'Whatever it signifies, it does not signify that I am disloyal to
Maäsau.'

'You have seen for yourself that there is a change here at Sagan,'
argued Unziar. 'No German has ever been welcome here before. We can but
guess at treason.'

'Hush! it cannot be that, since my father has knowledge of it.'

This was an entirely unexpected development of the difficulty. Unziar
felt the check, and even in his turbulence he changed his venue.

'It may be so--let that rest; but nothing can alter me in the belief
that Elmur is the natural enemy of the State. Valerie, he can give you
many things that I cannot offer you. But my love--No, hear me for once.
You must hear me, Valerie! You know that I have loved you always, I
don't remember when it began--I was a boy. But Elmur at the best must
have loved others before you. Whereas I--I have thought of no one else
all my life!'

'Why, I have heard differently, Anthony,' she interposed, with a smile
that was a vain effort to temper the intensity of his mood.

He stamped with his spurred heel upon a fallen flower.

'I don't pretend to be a saint; I am what other men are. You see I do
not deceive you even now. But give me the chance and I will prove to you
that the Unziars can be faithful. Valerie, give me your love! For God's
sake don't say you cannot! Give me your love!'

'Anthony!'

It almost shocked her to see Unziar--cold and cynical Unziar--pleading
as a man pleads for escape from death, with a terrible self-abandonment.

'Wait! Tell me this. Did you choose von Elmur?'

'My--we--it has nothing to do with that kind of thing.'

'I thought not! Then you will sacrifice yourself for an idea? You shall
not!'

'Anthony, you are very good to me--you have always been. I know that if
I felt for you as you wish me to feel, then you could help me. But I
don't! As long as I can remember you have been my playfellow, my
brother; but not more--never this! Anthony, I love you, but not--but
not--You have been so honest with me that whatever it costs I must be
honest with you. I can never do as you wish!'

Unziar listened rather to some far-off tide of thought, as it seemed,
than to her words--thoughts that flowed in upon him and quenched hope.

'You do not love me; Elmur is beside the mark--beside the question of
love--altogether. Then, Valerie, whom do you love?'

She gave him a frightened glance, and drew in her breath as one who
parries a blow.

'There is no one'; then, added more firmly, 'You are mistaken--there is
no one.'

'If that be so,' responded the young man sullenly, 'then my chance is as
good as another's. I shall not give up hope! Remember that. But I have
thought that Rallywood----'

Valerie recalled the coldness of the averted grey eyes, and the memory
stung her.

'He hates me,' she replied with a haughty smile, 'as I hate him!'

'Rallywood hates you?' he repeated in angry astonishment.

'Yes; but whatever he may feel for me I return in full!'

'Valerie, then you love no one? Say it again.'

The jingle of spur and scabbard came through the flower-hung spaces, and
Rallywood passed within a few feet of them. He was whistling softly as
he walked along with an easy swing of his strong shoulders.

'I love----' Valerie began, and stopped short, for Rallywood turned in
his stride as if he felt their eyes upon him.

'His Highness has sent for you, Unziar,' he said.




CHAPTER XIII.

LOVE IN TWO SHADES.


All the next morning the snow fell persistently, and Sagan might have
been, as far as appearances went, a castle built in the air. Above,
below, around, the snow eddied like a fairy torrent, beating against the
solid walls and curling in curious ringed swirls about its buttresses as
water beats about a rock in midstream.

But the dominant grey of the outside world cast no appreciable
reflection on the spirits of Madame de Sagan's guests, with whom gaiety
and wild devices for killing time were necessary and familiar things.

But to Valerie the same suggestion of fear and unrest that had oppressed
her on the previous evening still held its silent sway over the place.
She stood at the broad window of the main staircase watching the swift
atoms of snow drift past, each one by itself a mere melting point, but,
in their millions, mighty. She shivered and looked round with an odd
sense of apprehension, as if the vague blind storm outside had its
counterpart in a vague blind danger within.

A tall man came leaping up the staircase. He stopped beside her. She
looked up at him, her deep eyes were full of some disturbing thought.

'Captain Rallywood, will you tell Major Counsellor from me,' she began
at once, in a low, hurried voice, 'that, in spite of what he has heard
of me, he must still believe Maäsau is the dearest thing on earth to me.
Tell him that, if needful, I am ready to prove it with my life! He may
make quite sure I meant all I said to him yesterday.'

Rallywood stood silent. The passion of her voice and speech echoed in
her own ears and suddenly seemed all excessive and uncalled for; a
blush--half anger, half shame--rushed over her face, bringing tears to
her eyes. Why was it decreed that she should always, in some small
foolish way, appear to disadvantage before this wretched Englishman.

'I will tell him,' said Rallywood at last, 'though I cannot understand.'

'No, you cannot understand! You are so cold, so self-centred that the
feelings and tumults which trouble most of us appear as weaknesses to
you. Since you cannot understand us, you should not judge us, we others,
who, in our own spasmodic way, love our country as you serve
yours--steadily and with a whole heart.'

Now, John Rallywood was perplexed. He longed to set himself right with
her. Her very accusations, her readiness to find fault, which might have
made matters clear to some men, only disheartened him with a renewed
sense of her dislike.

'You hate my nation,' he said, after a pause of consideration,
'therefore you condemn me, not because of anything I have done, but on
general grounds, putting the worst construction on--on everything. I
wonder why you judge me so hardly?'

Valerie laughed, her red lip finely edged with scorn.

'On the contrary, you judge us! Who made you a judge over us? You regard
us--you English--with that straight steady look. I suppose you feel what
futile creatures we others are, with our shifting moods and passions,
our little furies and desperations! Do you remember the night you joined
the Guard--the night in the Cloister of St. Anthony? How I trembled and
feared for you, I'--she laughed again--'I even wanted to help you! How
absurd it all seemed to you, didn't it? I remember you were very cool
and quiet, and I suppose you thought it very foolish--one of those
unnecessary, extravagant emotions in which we inferior races are apt to
indulge!'

'Stop!' Rallywood cut her short with a peremptory word, 'I will not
allow you to say such things of yourself nor--of me!'

Valerie threw back her head with the slight haughty lift he knew so
well.

'You are rather too certain of your own power,' she said.

'You say you remember that night?--not so well as I do? You think I am
very sure of myself. And yet I have been mistaken on points that touch
me close. I thought that night when I knew I might never see the
morning--I dared to fancy that we--you and I--understood each other--a
little.' He waited, but Valerie had turned away; her profile looked
exquisite, but cold, against the dark shutter as she watched the driving
snow. 'So I was the fool after all, you see!' he ended lamely.

According to the immemorial fashion of love, they understood and
misunderstood each other alternately playing high and low at every other
moment upon the wide gamut of feeling, touching faint sweet notes that
would echo for ever.

Rallywood's self-control was giving way a little, and she instinctively
felt her power and used it.

'I wonder what you really think of us behind that quiet alertness of
yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I--understood you a
little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you
now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of
course you are certain that all unfair opinions of you must come right
in the end.'

But Rallywood passed over her many sentences to seize the central idea
that appealed to him.

'Yes, I have learned to wait. I told you that everything comes to him
who waits. Unfortunately a proverb is true often, not always. One thing
can never come to me however long I wait. For me there is no hope.'

'I don't know what you hope for,' replied the girl, slowly, as if she
were choosing her words; but she hardly knew what she said, she was lost
in a multitude of dreams, and her words but filled in the rare crevices
between them. 'I thought that every man carried his own fate in his own
hand.'

'A man can fight the tangible, but no man can struggle against the
ordinary laws of social life. We may laugh at conventional methods, but
even in Révonde there are some which must be yielded to.'

'I don't think,' said Valerie, 'we yield to many in Révonde.'

Rallywood saw a group of people advancing towards them. Valerie, with
her changes of mood and manner, distracted him, and drove him on to say
what he had resolved never to be tempted into saying.

'I am a soldier--only a soldier; I gain a livelihood, but no more. I
have no luck and no genius. To make a fortune or a name is beyond me.
And without fortune many desirable things are impossible.'

Valerie turned upon him a bewildering smile.

'I shall know for the future, Captain Rallywood, what you are thinking
of. You will be thinking, for all those grave eyes of yours, of the
fortune you cannot make!'

'Not quite that, Mademoiselle,' he answered, 'I shall be thinking of the
girl I cannot win.'

Valerie found herself drawn away from him by the passing group. She was
aware of a warm throb at her heart, she was trembling a little, and the
fear of the morning had temporarily vanished. For no definite reason
which she could afterwards discover, she felt suddenly happy.

By evening the _tsa_ had blown away the snow-clouds for the time, and a
thin moon gleamed fitfully over the wide expanses of white. Remote,
muffled in leagues of snow, and alive with hungry passions and
unscrupulous strength, the Castle of Sagan did not, on that wild January
night, offer desirable housing to the Grand Duke of Maäsau. He had yet
some thirty hours to spend as his cousin's guest before he could return
to his capital without showing suspicion or giving offence. A hundred
times he wished himself back in his great palace by the river bank where
the squadrons of the Guard lay within call. But he bore himself well
notwithstanding, and although, on the plea of chill and fatigue, he kept
to his rooms more than usual, his short appearances in public left in
one sense nothing to be desired. He did not carry himself as a man in
mortal anxiety, but was as dissatisfied, as discourteous, and as
disagreeable as it was his custom to be.

Late in the afternoon Madame de Sagan retired to take some rest before
dinner. Wrapped in lace and silk, she was standing in front of her
mirror with her women about her, when the Count entered. At his first
imperious word the attendants vanished.

Isolde continued to stare into the glass like one fascinated, for in it
she not only saw the reflection of her own slender white-clad figure,
but over her shoulder the fierce face she dreaded.

For a long minute husband and wife remained reading each other's faces
in the looking-glass.

She had seen aversion and menace in the Count's lowering face many a
time before, and was at length beginning to believe the almost
impossible fact to be true, that a man lived who hated her, over whom
her beauty had no power.

The young Countess shivered in mortal terror.

'Simon,' she wailed suddenly, 'you are changed,--you do not love me any
more!'

A broad smile flitted across the savage old face.

'You are a fool, but a very pretty fool, Isolde, and for that a man
might forgive you many things. Now listen to me. After you retire to
your rooms for the night, keep close to them, no matter what you hear.
There may be a disturbance, and you had better have Selpdorf's daughter
to keep you company.' His expression changed as he spoke of Valerie.

'There is danger,' she gasped, 'danger. What is it, oh, tell me what it
is!' Her first fear leaping towards Rallywood.

He stared into her shrinking eyes.

'If you ever hope to be Duchess of Maäsau,' he answered significantly,
'leave Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman, to take care of
themselves. Keep your tongue silent! Remember!' He caught her slender
wrist roughly as he spoke and pressed it to enforce the command.

The Countess made no reply, but her fingers closed in upon her palms.

'Come, give me a kiss, and promise me to do so much towards making
yourself a Grand Duchess.' He brushed her lips carelessly with his
moustache.

The caress brought no response; but as he bent over her she whispered,
'Have mercy on me Simon!' (it was a prayer born rather of some vague
instinct of danger than any defined fear); 'don't kill me!'

He put his thick arm round her and shook her impatiently.

'Kill you, Isolde? Are you mad? You are far more useful to me living
than dead. Get rid of your silly fears, and remember--silence!'

Then putting her back on the couch with more gentleness than might have
been expected of him, he walked out of the room. For a little while she
sat listening, then opened her eyes and glanced about her. Yes, he was
gone. But it was characteristic of her that at such a time her chief and
overpowering thought was Valerie as a rival! 'Valerie's lovers, Unziar
and the Englishman!' A score of trifles rushed back upon her memory; but
no it could not be. It was one of the Count's amiable ways to suggest
causes of jealousy to his wife. He meant nothing, for what could he
know? The soothing conviction grew upon her that the taunt was thrown at
her for what it was worth. Oh, how she hated Sagan--hated his
bloodshot, beast's eyes, his mocking laugh, his cruel hands, his
crueller gibes!

She pushed back the lace from her wrist and saw the thin parallels of
bruised flesh his fingers had left--entirely unaware, it must be
owned--upon her whiteness. Ah, she would show these to Rallywood--as a
proof that she was in danger, that she actually needed his protection,
and so win him from his post, which to-night would become the post of
death.

All her little vain soul thrilled within her at the possibility of
triumph--of defeating the honour of such a man--of winning him from his
watch for love's sake--of overcoming the scruples that had for so long a
time stood out against her wiles.

And yet in her poor way she loved him--loved him as she would probably
never love another. Some women are made in that way, they take pride in
the loftiness of the height from which they drag men down. Then he must
be saved, she told herself, at all costs saved! He would live to thank
her yet. A thought of him lying dead in his blood by the dark embrasure
that masked the entrance to the royal apartments flashed across her
mind. She stretched out her arms with a soft call like a bird's.

'Oh, love, love, I will save you!'




CHAPTER XIV.

HALF A PROMISE.


Ten minutes later a big emblazoned footman brought Rallywood a summons
from the Countess, as he stood talking to Counsellor and the Russian
_attaché_.

As he moved away Blivinski placed a bony impressive finger on
Counsellor's sleeve.

'If he were not English, you could not trust him,' he said
enigmatically.

Counsellor raised his bushy eyebrows, with a humorous glance. 'We have
had our day.'

'Ah, my friend, you know most things. Also I know a very few,' Blivinski
said significantly, 'but with your nation patriotism is not a virtue, it
is a part of your physical system. You sacrifice all for your country,
not because it is right to do so, but simply because you cannot help it;
the good God made you so. Therefore this young man, in face of the
supreme temptation of youth, may be trusted. I speak of these things now
because you will remember, in good time, that those who are against you
will not dare to injure'--he removed the finger to his own breast--'us
also!'

And the little silent swarthy man slipped away almost before Counsellor
realised that Russia, the mighty, had given him a pledge which might
prove of immense value in the uncertain future.

Rallywood found the young Countess crouching and shivering near a wood
fire. She was magnificently dressed in rich tones of royal purple, that
accentuated her delicate fairness and beauty, and a small diadem of
amethysts shone in the pale gold of her hair.

She took no notice of his entrance, though she was acutely conscious
that his eyes were on her. She was hungry of his gaze, and she believed
in the power of her own loveliness.

'Jack,' she said at last, 'come here. I wonder now why I sent for you,
but I am miserable.'

She looked up at him heavy-lidded.

There was concern in his voice as he answered her.

'If I told you all,' she went on, 'you would not believe me. I am
now--to-night--in great danger.'

'In danger? Here? where you are surrounded by friends,' replied
Rallywood, beginning to wish himself well out of it. Had there been no
Valerie Selpdorf, or even had he not uttered those impulsive words
which, to his mind, changed his position from the indefinite to the
definite, the history of his life might have been turned into another
channel that evening. As it was, though Valerie remained free as the
wind, he felt himself to be in some vague manner bound to her.

'Nonsense! You know how useless all these friends would be if things
went wrong with me. They flatter the Countess of Sagan, but not one of
them would make the smallest sacrifice for Isolde, the woman. I do not
know if you, even you, are my friend. We talked about it--long ago. But
I have not put you to the test, and I--I often wonder if our friendship
still remains alive.'

'I am as I always was,' he parried.

'I wonder if that is true?' She raised her drooping face again. 'I don't
know how to believe you. Why will you keep up this pretence of--of
reserve between us? You never tell me your troubles, and I suppose you
have them, like the rest of us. We should be quite old friends now, and
yet you are always so'--she hesitated for a word--'courteous. Are you
ever angry, for example?'

'Very often.'

'But not with me, and I have given you cause many a time. If you would
be angry with me even once, Jack, causelessly angry, then I should know
I had a friend to whom I could go if I were in trouble--in such trouble
as I am to-night!'

'If there is anything I can do for you----'

The quiet tone annoyed her. She rose quickly.

'If--if--if! Any man could help me who--cared.'

'I do care.'

'I wonder,' she said wistfully, 'how much you mean of what you say. I
have no standard to judge you by, because you are not quite like other
men. But I owe you my life, and I sometimes think it gives me a claim on
you.'

'I can never pretend you owe me anything: you were quite safe; no
accident could have happened. You are far too good a horsewoman, though
you were nervous for the moment.' He spoke with a careless
affectionateness, for the young Countess in her helpless beauty appealed
to him.

'Look at me!' she said tragically. 'Do I seem hateful?'

'You are a young queen,' he paused, and added, 'a young queen--seen in a
dream! You are too ethereal 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/28167