‘When I was very young — nearly eleven years ago, in my first season — I met a man I liked very much, and he liked me. We grew very, very fond of each other. He was not much older than I, and had just joined the army. We couldn’t marry, because we had no money — my father had not come into the title then, you know — but we promised each other that we would wait. We waited, and no one knew, except, perhaps, my mother, and she kept us from seeing each other as much as she could. Then came the Boer war, and he was killed — killed in a wretched skirmish — not even in a battle — buried somewhere on the Veldt — if I only knew where! I read it in a despatch — just “killed” — nothing more. One doesn’t die of things, I suppose, and years passed, and I went out just the same, and they wanted me to marry. You know how it is with a girl! I married to get rid of myself — I married Leven because he was good-looking and had money, and — I don’t quite know why, but it seemed easier to marry a foreigner than an Englishman. I suppose you cannot understand that! It made all comparison impossible — perhaps that was it. When mine was dead, I could never have taken another who could possibly have known him, or who could be in the remotest degree like him.’
‘I understand that quite well,’ said Van Torp, as she paused.
‘I’m glad, then, for it makes it easier to explain the rest. I don’t think I always did my best to be nice to Leven. You see, he soon grew tired of me, and went astray after strange goddesses. Still, I might have tried harder to keep him if I had cared what he did, but I was faithful to him, in my own way, and it was much harder than you can guess, or any one. Oh, it was not any living man that made it hard — not that! It was the other. He came back — dead men do sometimes — and he told me I was his, and not Leven’s wife; and I fought against that, just as if a man had made love to me in society. It didn’t seem honest and true to my real husband, in my thoughts, you know, and in some things thoughts are everything. I fought with all my might against that one, that dear one. I think that was the beginning of my work — being sorry for other women who perhaps had tried to fight too, and wondering whether I should do much better if my dead man came back alive. Do you see? I’m telling you things I’ve hardly ever told myself, let alone any one else.’
‘Yes, I see. I didn’t know any one could be as good as that.’
‘You can guess the rest,’ Lady Maud went on, not heeding what he said. ‘When I believed that Leven was dead the fight was over, and I took my dead man back, because I was really free. But now, if Leven is alive after all, it must begin again. I ought to be brave and fight against it; I must — but I can’t, I can’t! It’s too hard, now! These two months have been the happiest in my life since the day he was killed! How can I go back again! And yet, if I cannot be an honest woman in my thoughts I’m not an honest woman at all — I’m no better than if I deserved to be divorced. I never believed in technical virtue.’
Van Torp had seen many sides of human nature, good and bad, but he had never dreamed of anything like this, even in the clear depths of this good woman’s heart, and what he heard moved him. Men born with great natures often have a tender side which the world does not dream of; call it nervousness, call it degeneracy, call it hysterical who will; it is there. While Lady Maud was finishing her poor little story in broken phrases, with her heart quivering in her voice, Mr. Rufus Van Torp’s eyes became suddenly so very moist that he had to pass his hand over them hastily lest a drop or two should run down upon his flat cheeks. He hoped she would not notice it.
But she did, for at that moment she turned and looked at his face, and her own eyes were dry, though they burned. She saw that his glistened, and she looked at him in surprise.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, apologising as if he had done something rude. ‘I can’t help it.’
Their hands were hanging near together as they walked, and hers touched his affectionately and gratefully, but she said nothing, and they went on in silence for some time before she spoke again.
‘You know everything now. I must be positively sure whether Leven is alive or dead, for what I have got back in these last two months is my whole life. A mere recognition at first sight and at ten yards is not enough. It may be only a marvellous resemblance, for they say every one has a “double” somewhere in the world.’
‘They used to say, too, that if you met your “double” one of you would die,’ observed Van Torp. ‘Those things are all stuff and nonsense, of course. I was just thinking. Well,’ he continued, dwelling on his favourite monosyllable, ‘if you decide to come on the yacht, and if the man doesn’t blow away, we shall know the truth in three or four days from now, and that’s a comfort. And even if he turns out to be Leven, maybe we can manage something.’
Lady Maud chose not to ask what her friend thought he could ‘manage’; for she had glanced at his face when he had spoken, and though it was half turned away from her, she saw his expression, and it would have scared a nervous person. She did not like him to be in that mood, and was sorry that she had brought him to it.
But Mr. Van Torp, who was a strong man, and had seen more than one affray in his ranching days, could not help thinking how uncommonly easy it would be to pick up Count Kralinsky and drop him overboard on a dark night next week, when the Lancashire Lass would be doing twenty-two knots, and there might be a little weather about to drown the splash.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MILLIONAIRE DID things handsomely. He offered to motor his party to Venice, and as Margaret declined, because motoring was bad for her voice, he telegraphed for a comfortable special carriage, and took his friends down by railway, managing everything alone, in some unaccountable way, since the invaluable Stemp was already gone in search of something for Mrs. Rushmore to eat; and they were all very luxuriously comfortable.
Kralinsky was not on board the yacht when they came alongside at sunset in two gondolas, following the steam-launch, which carried a load of luggage and the two maids. The Primadonna’s trunks and hat-boxes towered above Mrs. Rushmore’s, and Mrs. Rushmore’s above Lady Maud’s modest belongings, as the Alps lift their heads above the lower mountains, and the mountains look down upon the Italian foot-hills; and Potts sat in one corner of the stern-sheets with Margaret’s jewel-case on her knee, and Justine, with Mrs. Rushmore’s, glared at her viciously from the other corner. For the fierce Justine knew that she was going to be sea-sick on the yacht, and the meek Potts never was, though she had crossed the ocean with the Diva in rough weather.
Stemp led the way, and Mr. Van Torp took the three ladies to their cabins: first, Mrs. Rushmore, who was surprised and delighted by the rich and gay appearance of hers, for it was entirely decorated in pink and gold, that combination being Stemp’s favourite one. The brass bedstead had pink silk curtains held back by broad gold ribbands; there was a pink silk coverlet with a gold fringe; everything that could be gold was gilt, and everything that could be pink was rosy, including the carpet.
Mr. Van Torp looked at Stemp with approval, and Stemp acknowledged unspoken praise with silent modesty.
‘Beg pardon, madam,’ he said, addressing Mrs. Rushmore, ‘this is not exactly the largest cabin on the yacht, but it is the one in which you will find the least motion.’
‘It’s very sweet,’ said the American lady. ‘Very dainty, I’m sure.’
On the writing-table stood a tall gilt vase full of immense pink roses, with stems nearer four feet long than three. Mrs. Rushmore admired them very much.
‘How did you know that I love roses above all other flowers?’ she asked. ‘My dear Mr. Van Torp, you are a wizard, I’m sure!’
Lady Maud and Margaret had entered, and kept up a polite little chorus of admiration; but they both felt uneasy as to what they might find in their respective cabins, for Margaret hated pink, and Lady Maud detested gilding, and neither of them was especially fond of roses. They left Mrs. Rushmore very happy in her quarters and went on. Lady Maud’s turn came next, and she began to understand, when she saw a quantity of sweet wood violets
on her table, just loosened, in an old Murano glass beaker.
‘Thank you,’ she said, bending to smell them. ‘How kind of you!’
There was not a trace of gilding or pink silk. The cabin was panelled and fitted in a rare natural wood of a creamy-white tint.
‘Beg pardon, my lady,’ said Stemp. ‘This and Miss Donne’s cabin communicate by this door, and the door aft goes to the dressing-room. Each cabin has one quite independent, and this bell rings the pantry, my lady, and this one rings Miss Donne’s maid’s cabin, as I understand that your ladyship has not brought her own maid with her.’
‘Very nice,’ said Lady Maud, smelling the violets again.
Mr. Van Torp looked at Stemp as he would have looked at a horse that had turned out even better than he had expected. Stemp threw open the door of communication to the cabin he had prepared for the Primadonna. The two cabins occupied the whole beam of the vessel, excepting the six-foot gangway on each side, and as she was one of the largest yachts afloat at the time, there was no lack of room.
‘Carnations, at this time of year!’ cried Margaret, seeing half an armful of her favourite dark red ones, in a silver wine-cooler before the mirror. ‘You really seem to know everything! Thank you so much!’
She buried her handsome face in the splendid flowers and drew in a deep, warm breath, full of their sensuous perfume, the spicy scent of a laden clove-tree under a tropical sun.
‘Thank you again!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Thank you for everything, the delightful journey, and this lovely room, and the carnations!’
She stood up suddenly to her height, in sheer pleasure, and held out her hand to him. He pressed it quietly, and smiled.
‘Do as you would be done by,’ he said. ‘That’s the Company’s rule.’
She laughed at the allusion to their agreement, of which Lady Maud knew nothing, for they had determined to keep it secret for the present.
Mr. Van Torp had not found an opportunity of speaking to Lady Maud alone, but he wished her to know when Kralinsky might be expected.
‘Stemp,’ he said, before leaving the cabin, ‘have you heard from the Count?’
‘Yes, sir. He got here this morning from Vienna in his motor, sir, and sent his things with his man, and his compliments to you and the ladies, and he will come on board in time for dinner. That was all, I think, sir.’
“She buried her handsome face in the splendid flowers.”
Lady Maud heard, and made a scarcely perceptible movement of the head by way of thanks to her friend, while listening to Margaret’s enthusiastic praise of everything she saw. Mr. Van Torp and his man departed, just as Potts appeared, accompanied by a very neat-looking English stewardess in a smart white cap. Lady Maud was unusually silent, but she smiled pleasantly at what Margaret said, and the latter made up her mind to drown her anger against Logotheti, and at the same time to be avenged on him, in an orgy of luxurious comfort, sea-air, and sunshine. The capacity of a perfectly healthy and successful singer for enjoying everything, from a halfpenny bun and a drive in a hansom to a millionaire’s yacht and the most expensive fat of the land, or sea, has never been measured. And if they do have terrible fits of temper now and then, who shall blame them? They are always sorry for it, because it is bad for the voice.
Mr. Van Torp reached his quarters, and prepared to scrub and dress comfortably after a week at Bayreuth and a railway journey.
‘Stemp.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That was quite nicely done. You must have had a lively time.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hope everything is tolerably satisfactory to you, sir.’
‘Yes. Find anything good to eat? Chickens don’t take gilding well, you know — doesn’t taste together. But I suppose you found something. Seen the cook?’
‘Yes, sir. I think things will be tolerable, sir, though this is not London, I must say.’
Mr. Van Torp showed no surprise at the statement, and disappeared into his bath-room, well pleased with himself and his man. But a moment later he opened the door again and thrust out his square sandy head.
‘Stemp, where have you put the Count? Far from here? I don’t want him near me.’
‘Last cabin forward on the port side, sir, next to the smoking-room. Very good cabin, sir.’
‘Whereabouts is port, right or left?’
‘Left-hand side of the vessel, sir,’ answered Stemp, who had been on many yachts. ‘There are ten more cabins empty, sir, between large and small, if you should think of asking any ladies and gentlemen to join at another point, sir.’
‘May pick up a couple somewhere. Can’t tell yet.’ And Mr. Van Torp disappeared definitely.
Lady Maud did not begin to dress at once, as there was plenty of time before dinner; she left the stewardess to unpack her things, and came out upon the six-foot gangway outside her cabin door to breathe the air, for it was warm. The city lay half a mile away in the after-glow of the sunset. The water was very green that evening, as it sometimes is in the Lagoons, though not always, and it was shaded off through many opalescent tints to heliotrope; then it was suddenly black below the steps of the Piazzetta and the Ducal Palace. Within the mysterious canal to the right she could make out the Bridge of Sighs, and there was the Ponte della Paglia, and the long line of irregular buildings to the eastward of the Prisons, as far as the Public Gardens. To the left there was the wide mouth of the Grand Canal, the Salute and the Custom-House, and the broad opening of the Giudecca. It was familiar to her, for she had seen it several times. She missed the Campanile, which she had been made to climb by an energetic governess when she was twelve years old, but all the rest was there and unchanged, a dream of evening colour, an Eastern city rising out of an enchanted water, under an Italian sky.
At any other time she would have enjoyed the sight almost without a thought, as she enjoyed everything that seemed to her beautiful or even pretty, though she had no pretensions to cultivated artistic taste or knowledge. But now she felt none of that healthy pleasure which a lovely sight naturally gave her. She was at a crisis of her life, and the exquisite evening scene was the battlefield of a coming struggle, with herself, or with another, she hardly knew. In half an hour, or in an hour, at most, she was to sit at table with a man she fully believed to be the husband for whom she had been wearing mourning, out of mere decency, but with the profound inward satisfaction of being free.
She was brave, and could try to think of what was before her if it turned out that she was not mistaken, and she could attempt to understand what had happened. She had already come to the conclusion that if Kralinsky was really Leven, the latter had seized the opportunity offered him by his own supposed death to disappear from St. Petersburg, and had taken another name. Leven had been a ruined man when he had tried to divorce her; when he died, or disappeared, he left nothing but debts, which were extinguished with him, for no one attempted to make his widow responsible for them, since there was no estate and she had no fortune beyond the allowance her father made her. Lord Creedmore was far from being a rich peer, too, and what he gave her was not much, although it would more than suffice for her simple wants, now that she intended to live with him again.
But if Leven had not been killed and had turned into Kralinsky, he now had plenty of ready money, though it was not easy to guess how he had obtained possession of a quantity of valuable Asiatic rubies within the few weeks that had elapsed between his supposed destruction by the bomb and the date of Van Torp’s transaction with him in New York. That was a mystery. So was his possible acquaintance, or connexion, with the Eastern girl who was looking for him, if there was a shadow of truth in Logotheti’s story. Lady Maud did not believe there was, and she felt morally sure that the tale had evolved itself out of the Greek’s fertile brain, as a fantastic explanation of his atrocious conduct.
While she was thinking over these matters and rehearsing in her thoughts the scene that was before her, she saw a gondola making straight for the yacht across the fa
st fading green of the lagoon that lay between the vessel and the Piazzetta. It came nearer, and she drew back from the rail against her cabin door, under the shadow of the promenade deck, which extended over the gangway and was supported by stanchions, as on an ocean liner. The Lancashire Lass, with her single huge yellow funnel, her one short signal mast, her turret-shaped wheel-house, and her generally business-like appearance, looked more like a cross between a fast modern cruiser and an ocean ‘greyhound’ than like a private yacht. She even had a couple of quick-firing guns mounted just above her rail.
Lady Maud looked at the gondola, and as it came still nearer, she saw that it brought only one passenger, and that he had a fair beard. She quietly opened her cabin door, and went in to dress for dinner.
Meanwhile Mr. Van Torp had completed his toilet, and was rather surprised to find himself magnificently arrayed in a dark-blue dinner-jacket, with perfectly new gilt buttons, and an unfamiliar feeling about the pockets. He had belonged to a yacht club for years, because it seemed to be expected of him, and Stemp and the tailor had thought fit that he should possess the proper things for a yachtsman.
‘Stemp,’ he said, ’is this the correct thing? I suppose you know.’
‘Yes, sir. Very smart indeed, sir. White caps are usually worn by yachting gentlemen in the Mediterranean, sir.’ Stemp offered him the cap in question, resplendent with a new enamelled badge. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but as to caps, most gentlemen lift them to ladies, just like hats, sir, but the captain and the officers touch theirs. His Grace always lifted his cap, sir.’
‘I guess that’ll be all right,’ answered Mr. Van Torp, trying on the cap. ‘Send the captain to my study, Stemp, and find out about when the ladies will be ready for dinner.’
Stemp disappeared, and in a few moments pink-faced Captain Brown appeared, quiet, round, and smart.
‘I suppose you’re ready at any moment, Captain?’ inquired the millionaire.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1252
