They brought rather interesting news concerning the Count. It appears that he and the baron had quarrelled and at the time of my friends' departure from Vienna it was pretty generally understood that there would be a duel.
"I never liked the baron," I said, with a grim smile that could not have been misinterpreted, "but I hope to heavens he isn't killed."
Mrs. Titus sighed. "Tarnowsy is regarded as a wonderful marksman."
"Worse luck!" growled Colingraft, gloomily twiddling his thumbs.
"What kind of a shot is the baron?" asked Jasper Jr., hopefully.
No one was able to enlighten him, but Billy Smith shook his head dolefully.
"Maris Tarnowsy is a dead shot. He'll pot the baron sure."
"Hang it all," said I, and then lapsed into a horrified silence.
When the Hazzards and Smiths departed the next morning they were in full possession of all of our plans, hopes and secrets, but they were bound by promises that would have haunted them throughout all eternity if they allowed them to be violated. I do not recall having seen two more intensely excited, radiant women in my life than Elsie and Betty Billy. They were in an ecstatic state of mind. Their husbands, but little less excited, offered to help us in every way possible, and, to prove their earnest, turned the prow of the motor-boat down-stream, abandoning the trip up the river in order to be in Vienna in case I should need them for any purpose whatsoever.
"You may rest easy so far as I am concerned, Mrs. Titus," said the young diplomat. "As a representative of the United States government I can't become publicly involved in this international muddle. I've just got to keep my lips sealed. If it were discovered that I knew of all this, my head would be under the snickersnee in no time at all. Swish! Officially suicided!"
At ten o'clock the next morning I was called to the telephone. Smith had startling news to impart. Count Tarnowsy and Baron Umovitch had engaged in a duel with pistols at sunrise and the latter had gone down with a bullet through his lungs! He died an hour later. Tarnowsy, according to the rumours flying about official Vienna, was already on his way to Berlin, where he would probably remain in seclusion until the affair blew over or imperial forgiveness was extended to him.
There was cause for satisfaction among us, even though the baron had fallen instead of the count. The sensational affair would serve to keep Tarnowsy under cover for some weeks at least and minimise the dangers attending the Countess's flight from the castle. Still, I could not help feeling disappointed over the outcome of the meeting. Why couldn't Count Tarnowsy have been the one to fall?
The Countess, very pale and distrait, gave utterance to her feelings in a most remarkable speech. She said: "This is one of the few fine things that Maris has ever done. I am glad that he killed that man. He should have done so long ago,—the beast! He was—ugh!—the most despicable creature I've ever known."
She said no more than this, but one could readily grasp all that she left unuttered.
Colingraft rather sententiously remarked to little Rosemary, who could not have comprehended the words, of course: "Well, little Rosebud, your papa may be a spendthrift but he never wastes bullets."
Which was entirely uncalled for, I contend. I was struck by the swift look of dread that leaped into Aline's eyes and her pallor.
On top of all this came the astonishing news, by cipher despatch from old Jasper Titus's principal adviser in London, that his offer of one million dollars had been declined by Tarnowsy two days before, the Count having replied through his lawyers that nothing short of two millions would induce him to relinquish all claims to his child.
I had been ignorant of this move in the case, and expressed my surprise.
"I asked father to do it, Mr. Smart," said the Countess dejectedly. "It seemed the easiest way out of our difficulties—and the cheapest. He will never give in to this new demand, though. We must make the best of it."
"But why did you suggest such a thing to him?" I demanded with heat.
She looked hurt. "Because you seemed to think it was the right and honourable thing to do," she said patiently. "I do not forget what you said to me, days and days ago, even though it may have slipped your mind. You said that a bargain is a bargain and—well, I had Mr. Bangs write father just what you thought about it."
There was a suspicion of tears in her voice as she turned away and left me without another word. She was quite out of sight around the bend in the staircase, and her little boots were clattering swiftly upwards, before I fully grasped the significance of her explanation—or, I might better say, her reproach. It slowly dawned upon me that I had said a great many things to her that it would pay me to remember before questioning her motives in any particular.
As the day for her departure drew nearer,—it was now but forty-eight hours away,—her manner seemed to undergo a complete change. She became moody, nervous, depressed. Of course, all this was attributable to the dread of discovery and capture when she was once outside the great walls of Schloss Rothhoefen. I could understand her feelings, and rather lamely attempted to bolster up her courage by making light of the supposed perils.
She looked at me with a certain pathetic sombreness in her eyes that caused my heart to ache. All of her joyous raillery was gone, all of her gentle arrogance. Her sole interest in life in these last days seemed to be of a sacrificial nature. She was sweet and gentle with every one,—with me in particular, I may say,—and there was something positively humble in her attitude of self-abnegation. Where she had once been wilful and ironic, she was now gentle and considerate. Nor was I the only one to note these subtle changes in her. I doubt, however, if the others were less puzzled than I. In fact, Mrs. Titus was palpably perplexed, and there were times when I caught her eyeing me with distinct disapproval, as if she were seeking in me the cause of her daughter's weaknesses; as much as to say: "What other nonsense have you been putting into the poor child's head, you wretch?"
I went up to have a parting romp with Rosemary on the last night of her stay with me, to have my last sip of honey from her delectable neck. The Countess paid but little attention to us. She sat over in the window and stared out into the dusky shadows of the falling night. My heart was sore. I was miserable. The last romp!
Blake finally snatched Rosemary off to bed. It was then that the Countess aroused herself and came over to me with a sad little smile on her lips.
"Good night," she said, rather wistfully, holding out her hand to me.
I deliberately glanced at my watch. "It's only ten minutes past eight," I said, reproachfully.
"I know," she said, quietly. "Good night."
CHAPTER XVIII — I SPEED THE PARTING GUEST
Four o'clock in the morning is a graceless hour. Graveyards may yawn at twelve but even they are content to slumber at four. I don't believe there is anything so desolate in this world as the mental perspective one obtains at four o'clock. Tombstones are bright beacons of cheer as compared to the monumental regret one experiences on getting up to greet the alleged and vastly over-rated glories of a budding day. The sunrise is a pall! It is a deadly, dour thing. It may be pink and red and golden and full of all the splendours of the east, but it is a resurrection and you can't make anything else out of it. Staying up till four and then going to bed gives one an idea of the sunrise that is not supported by the facts; there is but one way to appreciate the real nature of the hateful thing called dawn, and that is to get up with it instead of taking it to bed with you.
Still, I suppose the sun has to come up and perhaps it is just as well that it does so at an hour when people are least likely to suspect it of anything so shabby.
Four o'clock is more than a graceless, sodden hour when it ushers in a day that you know is to be the unhappiest in your life; when you know that you are to say farewell forever to the hopes begot and nurtured in other days; when the one you love smiles and goes away to smile again but not for you. And that is just what four o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth of September meant to me.
Britton and I set forth in the automobile just at the break of dawn, crossing the river a few miles below the castle, and running back to a point on the right hand bank where we were to await the arrival of the boat conveying the Countess and her escort. Her luggage, carefully disguised as crated merchandise, had gone to Trieste by fast express a couple of days before, sent in my name and consigned to a gentleman whose name I do not now recall, but who in reality served as a sort of middleman in transferring the shipment to the custody of a certain yacht's commander.
It was required of me—and of my machine, which is more to the point—that the distance of one hundred and twenty miles through the foothills of the Austrian Alps should be covered and the passengers delivered at a certain railway station fifty miles or more south of Vienna before ten o'clock that night. There they were to catch a train for the little seaport on the upper Adriatic, the name of which I was sworn never to reveal, and, as I have not considered it worth while to be released from that oath, I am of necessity compelled to omit the mention of it here.
Mr. Bangs went on to Vienna the night before our departure, taking with him Helene Marie Louise Antoinette, a rather shocking arrangement you would say unless you had come to know the British lawyer as well as we knew him. They were to proceed by the early morning train to this obscure seaport. Colingraft Titus elected to accompany his sister the entire length of the journey, with the faithful Blake and Rosemary.
Billy Smith was to meet us a few miles outside the town for which we were bound, with a word of warning if there was anything sinister in the wind.
I heard afterwards from Poopendyke that the departure of the Countess and Rosemary from the castle in the grey; forlorn dawn of that historic fourteenth was attended by a demonstration of grief on the part of the four Schmicks that was far beyond his powers of description, and he possesses a wonderful ability to describe lachrymose situations, rather running to that style of incident, I may say. The elder Schmicks wailed and boo-hooed and proclaimed to the topmost turrets that the sun would never shine again for either of them, and, to prove that she was quite in earnest about the matter, Gretel fell off the dock into the river and was nearly drowned before Jasper, Jr., could dive in and get her. Their sons, both of whom cherished amorous feelings for Blake, sighed so prodigiously all the way down the river that the boat rocked. Incidentally, during the excitement, Jinko, who was to remain behind and journey westward later on with Mrs. Titus and Jasper, Jr., succeeded after weeks of vain endeavour in smartly nipping the calf of Hawkes' left leg, a feat of which he no doubt was proud but which sentenced my impressive butler to an everlasting dread of hydrophobia and a temporary limp.
It was nearing five o'clock when the boat slipped into view around the tree-covered point of land and headed straight for our hiding place on the bank.
I shall not stop here to describe the first stage of our journey through the narrow, rocky by-roads that ended eventually in the broad, alpine highway south and west of Vienna. Let it be sufficient to say that we jostled along for twelve or fifteen miles without special incident, although we were nervously anxious and apprehensive. Our guide book pointed, or rather twiddled, a route from the river flats into the hills, where we came up with the main road about eight o'clock. We were wrapped and goggled to the verge of ludicrousness. It would have been quite impossible to penetrate our motor-masks and armour, even for one possessed of a keen and practiced eye. The Countess was heavily veiled; great goggles bulged beneath the green, gauzy thing that protected her lovely face from sun, wind and man. A motor coat, two or three sizes too large, enveloped her slender, graceful figure, and gauntlets covered her hands. Even Rosemary's tiny face was wrapped in a silken veil of white. As for the rest of us, we could not have been mistaken for anything on earth but American automobilists, ruthlessly inspired to see Europe with the sole view to comparing her roads with our own at home. You would have said, on seeing us, that we knew a great deal about roads and very little about home.
Colingraft and Britton,—the latter at the wheel,—sat in the front seat, while I shared the broad cushions of the tonneau with the Countess, part of the time holding Rosemary, who was clamouring for food, and the rest of the time holding my breath in the fear that we might slip over a precipice. I am always nervous when not driving the car myself.
We stopped for breakfast at a small mountain inn, fifteen miles from our starting place. The Countess, a faint red spot in each cheek and a curiously bright, feverish glow in her dark eyes, revealed a tendency to monopolise the conversation, a condition properly attributed to nervous excitement. I could see that she was vastly thrilled by the experiences of the hour; her quick, alert brain was keeping pace with the rush of blood that stimulated every fibre in her body to new activities. She talked almost incessantly, and chiefly about matters entirely foreign to the enterprise in hand.
The more I see of women, the less I know about them. Why she should have spent the whole half hour devoted to breakfast to a surprisingly innocuous dissertation on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche is—or was—beyond me.
How was I to know that tears lay close to the surface of those shimmering, vivacious eyes? How was I to know that sobs took refuge behind a simulated interest in philosophy?
We had luncheon picnic fashion half-way to our journey's end, diverging from the main road to find a secluded spot where we could spread our cloth and open our hampers without fear of interruption or, to use a more sinister word, detection. It was rather a jolly affair, that first and last al fresco banquet of ours under the spreading branches of mighty trees and beside the trickling waters of a gay little mountain brook that hurried like mad down to the broad channel of the Danube, now many miles away. The strain of the first few hours had slackened. Success seemed assured. We had encountered no difficulties, no dangers in town or country. No one appeared to be interested in us except through idle curiosity; villagers and peasants stared at us and grinned; policemen and soldiers stood aside to let us pass, or gave directions politely when requested to do so. There were no signs of pursuit, no indications of trouble ahead. And so we could afford to be gay and confident at our midday meal in the hills bordering the broad highway.
We even went so far as to arrange for a jolly reunion in New York City at no distant day! I remember distinctly that we were to dine at Sherry's. To me, the day seemed a long way off.
I suppose, being a writer of fiction, I should be able to supply at this point in the narrative, a series of thrilling, perhaps hair-raising encounters with the enemy, in the form of spies, cut-throats, imperial mercenaries or whatever came handiest to the imagination. It would be a very simple matter to transform this veracious history into the most lurid of melodramas by the introduction of the false and bizarre, but it is not my purpose to do so. I mean to adhere strictly to the truth and stand by the consequences. Were I inclined to sensationalism it would be no trouble at all for me to have Tarnowsy's agents shooting at our tires or gasoline tank from every crag and cranny; or to have Rosemary kidnapped by aeroplanists supplied with drag-hooks; or to have the Countess lodged in a village prison from which I should be obliged to liberate her with battle-axe and six-shooter, my compensation being a joyous rest in a hospital with the fair Aline nursing me back to health and strength and cooing fond words in my rapacious ear the while I reflected on the noble endowments of a nature that heretofore had been commonplace and meek. But, no! None of these things happened and I decline to perjure myself for the privilege of getting into the list of "six best sellers."
So far as I am able to judge, there was absolutely no heroism displayed during our flight through the hills and valleys, unless you are willing to accept as such a single dash of sixty miles an hour which Britton made in order to avoid a rain-shower that threatened to flank us if we observed the speed laws.
But wait! There was an example of bravado on my part that shall not go unrecorded. I hesitated at first to put it down in writing, but my sense of honour urges me to confess everything. It happened just after that memorable picnic luncheon in the shady dell. The Countess, I maintain, was somewhat to blame for the incident. She suggested that we,—that is to say, the two of us,—explore the upper recesses of this picturesque spot while the others were making ready for the resumption of our journey.
Shame, contrition, humiliation or whatever you may elect to call it, forbids a lengthy or even apologetic explanation of what followed her unfortunate suggestion. I shall get over with it in as few words as possible.
In the most obscure spot in all those ancient hills, I succumbed to an execrable impulse to take her forcibly in my arms and kiss her! I don't know why I did it, or how, but that is just what happened. My shame, my horror over the transcendental folly was made almost unbearable by the way in which she took it. At first I thought she had swooned, she lay so limp and unresisting in my arms. My only excuse, whispered penitently in her ear, was that I couldn't help doing what I had done, and that I deserved to be drawn and quartered for taking advantage of my superior strength and her gentle forbearance. Strange to say, she merely looked at me in a sort of dumb wonder and quietly released herself, still staring at me as if I were the most inexplicable puzzle in the world. Her cheeks, her throat, her brow grew warm and pink with a just indignation; her lips parted but she uttered no word. Then I followed her dejectedly, cravenly back to the roadside and executed an inward curse that would hang over my miserable head so long as it was on my shoulders.
Her vivacity was gone. She shrank down into the corner of the seat, and, with her back half turned toward me, gazed steadfastly at the panoramic valley which we were skirting. From time to time I glanced, at her out of the corners of my eyes, and eventually was somewhat relieved to see that she had closed her own and was dozing. My soul was in despair. She loathed, despised me. I could not blame her. I despised myself.
And yet my heart quickened every time I allowed myself to think of the crime I had committed.
The day was a glorious one and the road more than passably good. We bowled along at a steady rate of speed and sundown found us about twenty-five miles from our destination. Not caring to run the risk of a prolonged stay in the town, we drew up at a roadside inn and had our dinner in the quaint little garden, afterwards proceeding leisurely by moonlight down the sloping highway.
Billy Smith met us six or eight miles out and we stopped to parley. He examined the Countess's skilfully prepared passports, pronounced them genuine (!), and then gave us the cheerful news that "everything was lovely and the goose hung high." The train for the coast was due to leave the Staats-bahn-hof at 10.05, and we had an hour to spare. He proposed that we spend it quite comfortably at the roadside while Britton went through the pretence of repairing our tires. This seemed an agreeable arrangement for every one but Britton, who looked so glum that I, glad of the excuse, offered to help him.
No sooner was I out of the car and Billy Smith in my place beside the Countess than she became quite gay and vivacious once more. She laughed and chatted with him in a manner that promptly convinced me that propinquity so far as I was concerned had had a most depressing effect upon her, and that she revelled in the change of companions.
I was so disturbed by the discovery that Britton had to caution me several times to handle the inner tubes less roughly or I would damage them and we might suffer a blow-out after all.
Every one appeared to be gay and frivolous, even Blake, who chattered sotto voce with Britton, that excellent rascal spending most of his time leaning against the spare tires in order to catch what she was saying for his benefit. All efforts to draw me into the general conversation were unavailing. I was as morose and unresponsive as an Egyptian mummy, and for a very excellent reason, I submit. The Countess deliberately refused to address a single remark to me. Indeed, when I seemed perilously near to being drawn into the conversation she relapsed into a silence that was most forbidding. My cup of misery was overflowing.
I wondered if she would feel called upon, at some distant confessional, to tell the fortunate Lord Amberdale that I had brutally kissed her. And Lord Amberdale would grin in his beastly supercilious English way and say: "What else could you have expected from a bally American bounder?" She would no doubt smile indulgently.
Heigh-ho!
All things come to an end, however. We found ourselves at last uttering our good-byes in the railway station, surrounded by hurrying travellers and attended by eager porters.
The Countess did not lift her veil. I deliberately drew her aside. My hot hand clasped hers, and found it as cold as ice and trembling.
"For God's sake," I whispered hoarsely in my humbleness, "say that you forgive me?"
She did not speak for many seconds. Then her voice was very low and tremulous. I felt that her sombre eyes were accusing me even as they tried to meet my own with a steadiness that was meant to be reassuring.
"Of course I forgive you," she said. "You have been so good to me."
"Good!" I cried bitterly. "I've been harsh, unreasoning, super-critical from the day I met—"
"Hush!" she said, laying her free hand upon my arm. "I shall never forget all that you have done for me. I—I can say no more."
I gulped. "I pray to heaven that you may be happy, Aline,—happier than any one else in the world."
She lowered her head suddenly, and I was made more miserable than before by hearing a quick, half-suppressed sob. Then she withdrew her cold little hand and turned away to follow Colingraft who had called out to her.
I saw them board the train. In my heart there was the memory of a dozen kisses I had bestowed in repentant horror upon the half-asleep Rosemary, who, God bless her little soul, cried bitterly on being torn away from my embrace.
"Well," said Billy Smith, taking me by the arm a few minutes later, "let's have a bite to eat and a cold bottle before we go to bed, old chap. I hope to heaven she gets through all right. Damme, I am strong for her, aren't you?"
"I am," said I, with conviction, coming out of a daze.
He led me off to a cafe where he seemed to be more or less at home, and where it was bright and gay for him but gloomier than the grave to me.
I drove the car home the next day. When we got down at the garage, Britton shivered and drew a prodigious breath. It was as if he had not breathed for hours. We had gone the distance in little more than half the time taken on the trip down.
"My word, sir," was all he said, but there was a significant tremor in his voice. It smacked of pride.
Mrs. Titus placidly inquired how we had got along, and appeared quite relieved when I told her we had caught the train at K—-. Jasper, Jr., revealed a genuine interest in the enterprise, but spoiled it all by saying that Aline, now prematurely safe, was most likely to leap out of the frying-pan into the fire by marrying some blithering foreigner and having the whole beastly business to do over again.
"How soon do they go?" asked Poopendyke late that afternoon, after listening to Mrs. Titus's amiable prophecies concerning Aline's future activities, and getting my harassed ear in a moment of least resistance.
"I don't know," said I, hopelessly. I had heard about all I could endure concerning his lordship's magnificent estates in England, and the sort of a lord he was besides. "There's nothing to do but wait, Fred."
"She is a remarkably fine woman but—" He completed the estimate by shaking his head, trusting to my intelligence, I suppose.
We waited two days for word from the fugitives. Late in the afternoon of the second day, Britton returned from town with a telegram for me. It said:
"Cargo safely aboard Pendennis, Captain Pardee commanding. Clear at two to-day. Everything satisfactory. (Signed) C. G. RAFT."
No sooner was this reassuring news received than Mrs. Titus complacently set about having her trunks packed. The entire household was in a stew of activity, for she had suddenly decided to catch the eight o'clock train for Paris. I telephoned to reserve accommodation on the Orient Express from Vienna, and also to have it stopped at the town across the river, a concession secured at a no inconsiderable cost.
She was to travel once more as my mother.
"You will not fail to look us up when you come to New York, will you, Mr. Smart? Mr. Titus will not be happy until he has expressed to you in person his endless gratitude. You have been splendid. We shall never forget your kindness, your thoughtfulness, your—your forbearance. I—I—"
Upon my word, there were real tears in the dear lady's eyes! I forgot and forgave much in recognition of this instant of genuine feeling on her part. It was not necessary for her to complete the sentence so humbly begun.
Their departure was made with some degree of caution, Mrs. Titus rather considerately reminding herself that my interests were at stake. I saw them aboard the train; she played her part admirably, I will say that for her. She lifted her veil so that I could bestow a farewell filial kiss upon her cheek. Jasper, Jr.'s, eyes popped very wide open at this, and, as he shook my hand warmly at parting, he said:
"You are a wonder, John,—a sure enough wonder. Why, hang it all, she doesn't even let dad do that."
But Jasper, Jr., was very young and he couldn't understand.
At last we were to ourselves, my extensive household and I. Late that night I sat in my study considering the best means of reducing my staff of servants and in computing, with dismay, the cost of being a princely host to people who had not the least notion what it meant to do sums in economic subtraction. It was soon apparent to me that retrenchment, stern and relentless, would have to follow upon my wild though brief season of profligacy. I decided to dismiss the scullery-maid.
I was indescribably lonely. Poopendyke was worried about my pallor, my lassitude. At the end of a week, he took it upon himself to drop a line to the Hazzards, urging them to run out for a visit in the hope that company might take me out of myself. All attempts to renew my work on the ill-fated novel met with utter failure. The power of mental concentration was gone. I spent most of my time in the garden.
The Hazzards came and with them the joyously beautiful Betty Billy. Poopendyke must have prepared them for the task in hand, for they proceeded at once to transform the bleak, dreary old castle into a sort of hilarious merry-go-round, with me in the very vortex of it all. They succeeded in taking me "out of myself," I will say that for them. My spirits took an upward bound and, wonderful to relate, retained their altitude in spite of all I could do to lower them. I did not want to be happy; I figured that I owed it to my recently aroused temperament to be permanently unhappy. But the wind blew another way and I drifted amiably with it, as a derelict drifts with the currents of the ocean but preferably with the warm gulf stream.
We had word from Mrs. Titus, in London, that negotiations had been reopened with the Count, and that a compromise might be expected. The obdurate nobleman had agreed, it seemed, to meet Jasper Titus's lawyers in Paris at no distant date. My chief concern however was for the Countess herself. That she had successfully reached the high seas was apparent; if not, the newspapers, which I read with eagerness, would have been filled with accounts of her seizure. We eagerly awaited the promised cablegram from New York, announcing her safe arrival there.
Smith joined us at the end of the week. I nerved myself to question him about the Englishman.
"Splendid fellow," said he, with discouraging fervour. "One of the finest chaps I know, eh, George?"
"For an Englishman," admitted Hazzard.
"He's a gentleman, and that's more than you can say for the rag-tag of nobility that paid court to Aline Tarnowsy. He was in love with her, but he was a gentleman about it. A thoroughbred, I say."
"Good looking?" I enquired.
"Well, rather! The sort of chap women rave about. Ask Betty. She was mad about him. But he couldn't see anything in her. I think she hates him now. He had eyes for no one but the fair Countess. An awful grind on Betty. She's used to something different."
Hazzard studied the clouds that drifted over our heads. "I wonder if Aline cared anything for him."
"I've always believed that she liked him better than she cared to admit, even to herself."
"I fancy he'll not let any grass grow under his feet, now that she's free," said Dr. Hazzard.
"Think she'll have him?"
"Why not? He has a much better position in England than Tarnowsy has here, and he's not after her money. I hate to say it, but Aline is a seeker after titles. She wouldn't be averse to adding 'your ladyship' to her collection."
"Oh, come!" I protested. "That is a nasty thing to say, George."
"She may have been regenerated," he said obligingly. "You know her better than I do, old chap. What say?"
"I didn't say anything," I muttered.
"I thought you did."
I hesitated a moment and then purged myself of the truth. "As a matter of fact, I have reason to believe she's in love with Amberdale and has been for a long time. I'm not saying it in disparagement, believe me. God knows she's entitled to something decent and fine in the shape of love. I hope he's good enough for her."
They looked at me with interest, and Smith broke the momentary silence.
"Oh, he's good enough for her," he said, with a queer smile.
"I'm glad of that," I said gruffly.
"The old la—I mean Mrs. Titus will be tickled to death if the match is pulled off," said Hazzard.
"She was tickled the first time," said I sententiously, and changed the subject. There was no sense in prolonging the agony.
Toward the close of their visit, a message arrived from the Countess herself, signed with the fictitious name we had agreed upon. The news she gave caused us to celebrate that night. We had a bonfire in the courtyard and drank to the god of Good Luck.
"Cargo safely landed in New York and forwarded to the Adirondacks for storage and to await the appearance of a claimant. Former owner has agreed to accept million and a half and release all claims. When are you coming over? (Signed) Alrose."
By the most extraordinary coincidence, a curt, business-like letter arrived in the evening post from Maris Tarnowsy, post-marked Paris. Its contents staggered me.
"John Bellamy Smart, Esquire.
"Dear Mr. Smart: Will you put a price on Schloss Rothhoefen? I am desirous of purchasing the castle if you care to sell and we can agree upon a fair price for the property. Sentiment moves me in this matter and I earnestly hope that you may be induced to part with your white elephant. If you will be so kind as to wire your decision, you will find me deeply grateful, and at the Ritz for the ensuing fortnight.
"Faithfully yours,
"MARIS TARNOWSY."
My "white elephant!" I was so eager to get rid of it that I would have wired at once, naming a figure proportionately low had it not been for the united protests of my four friends and the canny advice of Mr. Poopendyke.
"Soak him," said he, and I arose to the occasion.
I waited for three days and then telegraphed him that I would not take a heller less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, more than doubling the price I had paid for the property. I was prepared, however, to come down a paltry hundred thousand or so if he revealed signs of reluctance.
We built another bonfire that night and danced around it like so many savages.
"Terms acceptable. Will come to Schloss Rothhoefen at once to complete the transfer.
"TARNOWSY."
CHAPTER XIX — I BURN A FEW BRIDGES
Accompanied by Hazzard and Smith, I went over the castle from top to bottom, in quest of the reason for Tarnowsy's prompt acceptance of my demand. We made no doubt that he had a good and sufficient reason for wanting the place, and but one thing suggested itself to our imagination: his absolute certainty that treasure was hidden somewhere about the venerable pile, treasure of considerable magnitude, you may be sure, or he would not have revealed such alacrity in accepting my terms. Sentiment had nothing to do with this surprising move on his part. That was all bosh. He had an ulterior motive, and it was for me to get the better of him at his own game if I could. While I was eager to get rid of the castle at any price, I did not relish the thought of being laughed at for a fool by Maris Tarnowsy after he had laid his greedy hands upon treasure that had been mine without my knowledge.
He was no fool. The castle meant nothing to him as a home or as an investment. No doubt he would blow it to pieces in order to unearth the thing he knew its walls secreted.
We spent two unprofitable days in going over the place, and in the end sank down tired, defeated and without the slightest evidence in our possession that so much as a half crown lay hidden there as treasure-trove. I gave in and announced that if Tarnowsy could find anything worth having he was entitled to it so far as I was concerned, and I wouldn't begrudge him a farthing's worth.
He telegraphed that he would arrive on the morning of the third day, accompanied by his lawyer, a notary and an architect. My four guests departed in haste by the late night train, after extracting a promise from me to join them in Vienna when I was no longer the master of Schloss Rothhoefen. I rather relished the thought of a brief vacation!
Then, like the spider, I crept back into my web and waited for the foolish fly, knowing all the time that he would have the better of me in the long run.
I confess to a feeling of sadness in parting with the place, after all, elephantine though it was in every sense of the word. Within its grey and ancient walls that beautiful thing called love had come to me, to live with me forever. It had come unbidden, against my will, against my better judgment, and in spite of my prejudices, but still it was a thing to cherish and to hold in its virgin youth all through the long years to come. It would always be young and sweet and rose-coloured, this unrequited love of mine. Walking through the empty, dismantled rooms that had once been hers, I grew sick with longing, and, in something like fear, fled downward, absurd tears blinding my eyes. Verily, I was a fool,—a monstrous, silly fool!
Tarnowsy was as bland and smiling as a May morning as he came jauntily down the great hall to where I awaited him.
"I am here incognito, my dear Smart," he said, extending his gloved hand, which I took perforce. "Sub rosa, you might say," he went on with a wry smile. "A stupid, unchivalric empire has designs upon me, perfunctorily perhaps, but it's just as well not to stir up the monkeys, as you Americans would put it."
"Our late friend, the baron, was not totally without friends, I take it," said I drily.
He made a grimace. "Nor enemies," he declared. "Brave men usually have more enemies than friends, and he was a brave man, a truly brave man. Because he was a brave man I have no feeling of regret over the outcome of our—er—meeting. It is no honour to kill a coward, Mr. Smart."
He introduced his three companions. I was surprised to see that the lawyer was not the fawning Schymansky, and later on inquired for him. Tarnowsy laughed. "Poor old Schymansky! He is in prison."
"Aha! I am not surprised," said I.
"He was my second, poor chap. It did not occur to him to run away after the—er—duel. They had to make an example of some one. His trial comes up next week. I am afraid he may be dealt with rather harshly. I miss him dreadfully. But let us come to the matter in hand, Mr. Smart. I daresay your time is valuable. You have no objection to my going over the place with Mr. Saks, I am sure. He is the architect who is to rebuild the castle for me. My attorney and Mr. Pooly,—the notary,—will, with your assistance, draw up the proper contracts preliminary to the formal transfer, and I will sign them with you upon my return."
"Would it not be better to discuss the question of payments before we go any further, Count Tarnowsy?"
"You will be paid in cash, Mr. Smart, the instant the deed is transferred," he said coldly.
I followed him to the top of the stairs which descended to the basement of the castle. It was rather significant that he elected to explore the lower regions first of all.
"I shall accompany you," said I deliberately.
A faint scowl came into his face. He eyed me fixedly for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and said that his only desire was to avoid putting me to any unnecessary trouble. If I cared to come, he would be more than grateful. "It isn't necessary to visit the cellars, Saks," he said to the architect. "Ample time for that sort of rummaging. I particularly want your opinion on the condition of the intersecting walls on this floor and above. My scheme of improvements, Mr. Smart, contemplates the enlargement of these halls by throwing them into one."
"A very simple process," said I, "if the whole structure doesn't topple down upon your heads while you're about it."
"I shall contrive to save my scalp, Mr. Smart, no matter what happens. It is very precious to me."
We went over the castle rather hurriedly, I thought, but he explained that Saks merely wanted a general idea of the structure; he would return another day to make a careful inspection.
"I daresay you are surprised that I should be willing to pay double your original price for Schloss Rothhoefen," he ventured, pausing in the corridor to light a cigarette. We were on our way to the top of the east wing.
"Oh, no," I said calmly. "I am aware that treasure is buried here. As a matter of fact, I've tried to unearth it myself, but without success. I wish you better luck."
"Thanks," said he laconically, after the first swift glance of inquiry. "It is doubtless a fairy tale, handed down by tradition. I take no stock in it. My principal object in acquiring Rothhoefen is to satisfy a certain vanity which besets me. I have it on excellent authority that my ex-father-in-law,—the man Titus, you know,—talks of buying the property and performing the stupendous, characteristic American feat of removing it, stone and timber, just as it is, to his estate north of New York City. No one but a vulgar, purse-proud American would think of doing such a thing."
The news staggered me. Could there be anything in what he said? If it was true that Jasper Titus contemplated such a quixotic move, there could be but one compelling force behind the whim: sentiment. But not sentiment on the part of Jasper Titus.
"I cannot believe that he considers doing such a thing," I said rather blankly. "You see, if any one should know, I am that one. He has not approached me, of that you may be sure."
He did not appear to be interested. "My information is not authoritative, Mr. Smart," said he. "It came to me through my representatives who conferred with his lawyers a fortnight ago in regard to certain difficulties that had existed between us. From what they were able to gather, the idea has taken root in the old man's head. Now, I want to buy this place for no other reason than to tell him that he hasn't enough money in his possession to purchase it from me. D'you see? Vanity, you may call it, as I do, but it pleases me to coddle it."
Very thoughtfully I strode along beside him. Would I be serving the Countess ill or well by selling the place to Tarnowsy? It was her whim, of course, and it was a foolish one.
"Suppose that he offered you twice what you are to pay me for the place," said I, struck by a sudden thought.
He laughed easily. "You will not, it seems, acquit me of cupidity, Mr. Smart. I should not sell to him under any consideration. That is final. Take it or leave it."
By this time we were in the rooms once occupied by the Countess. He glanced about the apartment carelessly.
"Deserted, I observe," he remarked with a queer smile.
My heart almost stood still. "Eh? What do you mean?"
"If I am not mistaken, these are the rooms once occupied by your valet's wife. Am I right?"
I steadied myself. "She has gone away," I said. "Couldn't stand the climate."
"I see," said he, but he was still smiling. "How does your valet stand it?"
"Nicely," said I, with a conscious blush.
"I mean the separation, of course."
"Certainly. He is used to it."
"Isn't it rather odd that he should still think she is here, in the castle?"
"Does he?" I murmured.
"I inquired for her when I encountered him downstairs. He said she was quite well this morning, except for a headache."
"She is subject to headaches, I believe," said I, with the utmost nonchalance. He lifted his right eyebrow slightly, but said no more on the subject.
A pile of rubbish lay heaped in one corner of the room, swept up and left there by the big Schmicks to await the spring house cleaning season I presume. Tarnowsy at first eyed the heap curiously, then rather intently. Suddenly he strode across the room and gingerly rooted among the odds and ends with the toe of his highly polished boot.
To my horror a dilapidated doll detached itself and rolled out upon the floor,—a well-remembered treasure of Rosemary's and so unique in appearance that I doubt if there was another in the world like it. Indeed, I have a distinct recollection of being told that the child's father had painted in the extraordinary features and had himself decorated the original flaxen locks with singular stripes of red and white and blue, a sardonic tribute to the home land of her mother.
I turned away as he stooped and picked up the soiled, discarded effigy. When next I looked at him, out of the corner of my eye, he was holding the doll at arm's length and staring at it with a fixed gaze. I knew that he recognised it. There could be no doubt in his mind as to the identity of that tell-tale object. My heart was thumping fiercely.
An instant later he rejoined me, but not a word did he utter concerning the strange discovery he had made. His face was set and pallid, and his eyes were misty. Involuntarily I looked to see if he had the doll in his hand, and in that glance observed the bulging surface of his coat pocket.
In silence we stood there awaiting the reappearance of Saks, who had gone into one of the adjoining rooms. I confess that my hand trembled as I lighted a fresh cigarette. He was staring moodily at the floor, his hands clasped behind his back. Something smacking of real intelligence ordered me to hold my tongue. I smoked placidly, yet waited for the outburst. It did not come. It never came. He kept his thoughts, his emotions to himself, and for that single display of restraint on his part I shall always remember him as a true descendant of the nobility.
We tramped down the long flights of stairs side by side, followed by the superfluous Mr. Saks, who did all of the talking. He was, I think, discoursing on the extraordinary ability of ancient builders, but I am not absolutely certain. I am confident Tarnowsy did not hear a word the fellow said.
In my study we found Poopendyke and the two strangers.
"Have you made out the papers?" demanded the Count harshly. An ugly gleam had come to his eyes, but he did not direct it toward me. Indeed, he seemed to avoid looking at me at all.
"Yes, Count Tarnowsy," said the lawyer. "They are ready for the signatures."
"Perhaps Mr. Smart may have reconsidered his offer to sell," said Tarnowsy. "Let him see the contracts."
"I have not reconsidered," I said quietly.
"You may sign here, Mr. Smart," said the notary, as he gave me the document, a simple contract, I found.
"Jasper Titus will offer more than I can afford to pay," said the Count. "Please do not feel that I am taking an unfair advantage of you. I am absolutely certain that he wants to buy this place for—his granddaughter, a descendant of barons."
The significance of this remark was obvious, and it was the nearest he ever came to uttering the conviction that had been formed in that illuminating five minutes upstairs. If he suspected,—and I think he did,—he preferred not to ask the questions that must have been searing his curious brain. It was a truly wonderful demonstration of self-restraint. I would have given much to have been able to read his innermost thoughts, to watch the perplexed movements of his mind.
"Schloss Rothhoefen is yours, Count Tarnowsy," said I. "It is for you to say whether his whim shall be gratified."
His lips twitched. I saw his hand touch the bulging coat-pocket with a swift, passing movement.
"Will you be good enough to sign, Mr. Smart?" he said coldly. He glanced at his watch. "My time is valuable. When can you give possession?"
"The day the deed is transferred."
"That will be in less than three days. I have satisfied myself that the title is clear. There need be no delay."
We signed the contract after I had requested Poopendyke to read it aloud to me. It called for the payment of fifty thousand kronen, or a little over two thousand pounds sterling, at the time of signing. His lawyer handed me a package of crisp banknotes and asked me to count them. I did so deliberately, the purchaser looking on with a sardonic smile.
"Correct," said I, laying the package on the table. He bowed very deeply.
"Are you satisfied, Mr. Smart, that there are no counterfeits among them?" he inquired with polite irony. Then to his lawyer: "Take the gentleman's receipt for the amount in the presence of witnesses. This is a business transaction, not a game of chance." It was the insult perfect.
As he prepared to take his departure, he assumed an insinuating air of apology, and remarked to me:
"I owe you an apology, Mr. Smart. There was a time when I did you an injustice. I suspected you of keeping your mistress here. Pray forgive my error."
Five days later I was snugly ensconced in the ducal suite at the Bristol, overlooking the Kartnerring-strasse, bereft of my baronial possessions but not at all sorry. My romance had been short-lived. It is one thing to write novels about mediaeval castles and quite another thing to try to write a novel in one of them. I trust I may never again be guilty of such arrant stupidity as to think that an American-born citizen can become a feudal baron by virtue of his dollars and cents, any more than an American-born girl can hope to be a real, dyed-in-the-wool countess or duchess because some one needs the money more than she does. It would be quite as impossible, contrariwise, to transform a noble duke into a plain American citizen, so there you are, even up.
My plans were made. After a fortnight in Vienna, I expected to go west to London for the autumn, and then back to New York. Strange to relate, I was homesick. Never before had my thoughts turned so restlessly, so wistfully to the haunts of my boyhood days. I began to long for the lights of Broadway (which I had scornfully despised in other days), and the gay peacockery of Fifth Avenue at four in the afternoon. It seemed to me that nowhere in all the world was life so joyous and blithe and worth while as in "old New York"; nowhere were the theatres so attractive, nowhere such restaurants. Even, in retrospect, the subway looked alluring, and as for the Fifth Avenue stages they were too beautiful for words. Ah, what a builder of unreal things a spell of homesickness may become if one gives it half a chance!
As for Schloss Rothhoefen, I had it on excellent authority (no less a person than Conrad Schmick himself) that barely had I shaken the dust of the place from myself before the new master put into execution a most extraordinary and incomprehensible plan of reconstruction. In the first place, he gave all the servants two weeks' notice, and then began to raze the castle from the bottom upward instead of the other way round, as a sensible person might have been expected to do. He was knocking out the walls in the cellars and digging up the stone floors with splendid disregard for that ominous thing known as a cataclysm. The grave question in the minds of the servants was whether the usual and somewhat mandatory two weeks' notice wouldn't prove a trifle too long after all. In fact, Hawkes, with an inspiration worthy of an office boy, managed to produce a sick grand-mother and got away from the place at the end of one week, although having been paid in full for two.
The day on which I left for Paris still saw Tarnowsy at work with his masons, heroically battering down the walls of the grim old stronghold, and I chuckled to myself. It was quite evident that he hadn't found the hiding place up to that time.
After several days in Paris, I took myself off to London. I was expecting letters at Claridge's, where I always take rooms, not because I think it is the best hotel in London but because I am, to some extent, a creature of habit. My mother took me to Claridge's when I was a boy and I saw a wonderful personage at the door whom I was pleased to call the King. Ever since then I have been going to Claridge's and while my first king is dead there is one in his place who bids fair to live long, albeit no one shouts encouragement to him. He wears the most gorgeous buttons I've ever seen, and I doubt if King Solomon himself could have been more regal. Certainly not Nebuchadnezzar. He works from seven in the morning until seven at night, and he has an imperial scorn for anything smaller than half a sovereign.
There were many letters waiting there for me, but not one from the Countess Aline. I had encouraged the hope that she might write to me; it was the least she could do in return for all that I had done for her, notwithstanding my wretched behaviour on the last day of our association. While I had undoubtedly offended in the most flagrant manner, still my act was not unpardonable. There was tribute, not outrage in my behaviour.
Poopendyke fidgeted a good deal with the scanty results of my literary labours, rattling the typed pages in a most insinuating way. He oiled his machine with accusative frequency, but I failed to respond. I was in no mood for writing. He said to me one day:
"I don't see why you keep a secretary, Mr. Smart. I don't begin to earn my salt."
"Salt, Mr. Poopendyke," said I, "is the cheapest thing I know of. Now if you had said pepper I might pause to reflect. But I am absolutely, inexorably opposed to rating anything on a salt basis. If you—"
"You know what I mean," he said stiffly. "I am of no use to you."
"Ah," said I triumphantly, "but you forget! Who is it that draws the salary checks for yourself and Britton, and who keeps the accounts straight? Who, I repeat? Why, you, Mr. Poopendyke. You draw the checks. Isn't that something?"
"If—if I didn't know you so well, I wouldn't hesitate to call you a blooming fool, Mr. Smart," said he, but he grinned as he said it.
"But he who hesitates is lost," said I. "This is your chance, don't let it slip." He looked at me so steadily for a moment that I was in some fear he would not let it slip.
Before I had been in London a week it became perfectly clear to me that I could not stretch my stay out to anything like a period of two months. Indeed, I began to think about booking my passage home inside of two weeks. I was restless, dissatisfied, homesick. On the ninth day I sent Poopendyke to the booking office of the steamship company with instructions to secure passage for the next sailing of the Mauretania, and then lived in a state of positive dread for fear the confounded American tourists might have gobbled up all of the cabins. They are always going home it seems to me, and they are always trying to get on a single unfortunate ship. In all my experience abroad, I've never known a time when Americans were not tumbling over each other trying to get back to New York in time to catch a certain train for home, wherever that may be. But Poopendyke managed it somehow. He must have resorted to bribery.
I awoke one morning to find a long and—I was about to say interesting—letter from the Countess! It was a very commonplace communication I found on the third or fourth reading. The sum and substance of its contents was the information that she was going to Virginia Hot Springs with the family for a month or two and that Lord Amberdale was to join them there.
It appeared that her father, being greatly overworked, was in need of a rest, and as the golf links at Hot Springs are especially designed to make it easy for rich men, his doctor had ordered him to that delightful resort. She hoped the rest would put him on his feet again. There was a page or so of drivel about Amberdale and what he expected to do at the New York Horse Show, a few lines concerning Rosemary; and a brief, almost curt intimation that a glimpse or two of me would not be altogether displeasing to her if I happened to be coming that way.
It may be regarded as a strange coincidence that I instructed Britton that very evening to see that my golf clubs were cleaned up and put into good shape for a little practice on a course near London, where I had been put up by an English author, and who was forever ding-donging at me to come out and let him "put it all over me." I went out and bought a new brassie to replace the one destroyed by the experimenting Rocksworth youth, and before I got through with it had a new putter, a niblick and a spoon, neither of which I needed for the excellent reason that I already possessed a half dozen of each.
Keyed up to a high pitch of enthusiasm, I played golf for ten days, and found my friend to be a fine sportsman. Like all Englishmen, he took a beating gracefully, but gave me to understand that he had been having a good deal of trouble with rheumatism or neuritis in his right elbow. On the last day we played he succeeded in bringing me in two down and I've never seen neuritis dispersed so quickly as it was in his case. I remember distinctly that he complained bitterly of the pain in his elbow when we started out, and that he was as fit as a fiddle at the eighteenth hole. He even went so far as to implore me to stay over till the next sailing of the Mauretania.
But I took to the high seas. Mr. Poopendyke cabled to the Homestead at Hot Springs for suitable accommodations. I cannot remember when I had been so forehanded as all that, and I wonder what my secretary thought of me. My habit is to procrastinate.
I almost forgot to mention a trifling bit of news that came to me the day before sailing. Elsie Hazzard wrote in great perturbation and at almost unfeeling length to tell me that Count Tarnowsy had unearthed the supposedly mythical Rothhoefen treasure chests and was reputed to have found gold and precious jewels worth at least a million dollars. The accumulated products of a century's thievery! The hoard of all the robber barons! Tarnowsy's!
Strange to say I did not writhe nor snarl with disappointment and rage. I took the news with a sang froid that almost killed poor Poopendyke. He never quite got over it.
Nor was I especially disturbed or irritated by the telegram of condolence I received on board ship from Tarnowsy himself. He could not resist the temptation to gloat. I shall not repeat the message for the simple reason that I do not wish to dignify it by putting it into permanent form. We were two days out when I succeeded in setting my mind at rest in respect to Aline, Countess Tarnowsy. I had not thought of it before, but I remembered all of a sudden that I held decided scruples against marrying a divorced woman. Of course, that simplified matters. When one has preconceived notions about such matters they afford excellent material to fall back upon, even though he may have disregarded them after a fashion while unselfishly thinking of some one else. As I say, the recollection of this well-defined though somewhat remorseless principle of mine had the effect of putting my mind at rest in regard to the Countess. Feeling as strongly as I did about marriage with divorcees, she became an absolutely undesirable person so far as matrimony was concerned. I experienced a rather doubtful feeling of relief. It was not so hard to say to myself that Lord Amberdale was welcome to her, but it was very, very difficult to refrain from adding the unamiable words: "damn him."
This rigid, puritanical principle of mine, however, did not declare against the unrighteousness of falling in love with a divorcee.