By Wit of Woman by Arthur W. Marchmont (best book reader txt) 📖

draw even further into my corner. He noticed it and laughed.

"Bit afraid of me, are you? You needn't be. I'm not dangerous, even if I'm not drugged. But I have been any time during the last three-and-thirty hours. You see I haven't seen you, and I haven't touched it ever since yesterday morning."

There was a bitterness in his tone I had not heard in it before; but the words filled me with pleasure.

"Not since midday yesterday, Henriette. Three-and-thirty hours: nearly two thousand minutes: every minute like an hour of hell. You didn't think I'd got the strength, I know. Neither did Gustav. And I suppose I'm only a fool to have done it—an infernal fool, that's all. It's getting easier already; but I'd give ten thousand kronen for a taste now—one little wee taste."

He sat suddenly bolt upright, clenched his fist and flung it out in front of him, and groaned as if the fever of temptation had laid hold of him with irresistible force.

"You don't seem to care," he said, bitterly, turning to me: and then his voice became strained and tense. "But you'd better. You hear that, Henriette, you'd better. You keep it from me or as there's a sky above us I wouldn't trust myself not to kill you."

Impulsively I stretched out my hand and laid it on his arm, as if to calm him. But he shook it off impatiently.

"All that's passed," he cried. "Two thousand hours of hell can change a man. They've changed me. I can see things now, and mean to see more. That's why I've come on this business. That and——" his voice fell and his head drooped, and with his lazy laugh he murmured—"What a fool I am, just because a girl——" The sentence was left unfinished, and his fingers stole to the pocket as if in search of the drug.

"I must smoke or have it. Not 'her sake' nor a million 'her sakes' will keep me from it if I don't. I shall stop the carriage and get it."

He lit a cigar and held the match up, and peered closely at me until the little flame flickered out. Then he leaned back and puffed fiercely, filling the carriage with the smoke, and making me cough. At that, he let down the window on his side sharply and bent forward that the air might blow on his face.

By the light of the street lamps I saw that his face was drawn and lined as if with the pain and passion of the struggle through which he had passed.

"Have we far to go?" he asked, raising his voice in consequence of the noise from the open window. I did not answer, and he shrugged his shoulders. "You're a cheerful companion for a man in my mood," he cried, almost contemptuously, as he closed the window with a shiver of cold.

He leant back in his seat, drew his coat closely about him, and smoked in silence, but with less vehemence. Presently he found the silence oppressive.

"One of us must talk," he said then. "I wonder why I'm here and what the devil will come of it!" he exclaimed, laughing.

I wondered, too, what would come of it; but I held my tongue. I had resolved not to speak during the whole ride if I could avoid it, so as not to reveal myself. And if I could reach the house without his discovering my deception, I saw a way by which I could mislead him.

"What are you wrapped up like that for? Throw your cloak back," he said next, and put out his hand as if to do it. I drew it closer round me. "Then you're not deaf as well as dumb," he laughed. "What's the matter with you? I can find a way to make you speak, I think—or you've been just play-acting ever since I knew you."

He bent toward me until his face was close to my veil. "You're not generally afraid to show your face. And you needn't be, it's pretty enough. You can hear that I know. A pretty woman never had a deaf ear for a truth like that—and it is truth; no more, no less than the truth. It didn't need either opium or drink for me to know that, Henriette—though you plied me with plenty of both for that matter. Can you deny that?"

He paused for me to answer; but I did not; and he leant back in his seat again.

"Yes, you're a beautiful woman, Henriette, and Gustav's a very clever, long-headed fellow—but between you, you made a bad mistake. You should have known better than to conjure up that old past of mine. You shouldn't have had a friend about you with haunting eyes. Heavens, how they haunted me—aye, and haunt me now. Doesn't that make you speak? No? Then I'll tell you more. That girl's eyes killed at a stroke every thought in my mind about you. More than that—it's just for her sake, I've endured all these hours of hell. I can trust you not to tell her that—but it's true, Henriette, just as true as that you're a beautiful woman."

Evidently he looked for some sharp outburst from me, for he spoke in a deliberate, taunting way as if to provoke me. And when I made no sign, he was sorely perplexed.

"You are going to explain a lot of things to me presently—I've come for that and that only—but I'll tell you something first that you don't know. I met that friend of yours yesterday morning when I was riding in the Stadtwalchen. We had quite a long and almost intimate talk, and she took me right back across the years to the past; and by no more than a word, a touch and a glance, she put something between me and the devil I had loved, until I hated it and hated myself for having loved it. And for the sake of what she said, I've been in hell ever since. But she did it; she alone, and I've fought against the cursed thing because of her words and her eyes. God, what it has cost me!" He ended with a weary, heavy sigh.

That in my great gladness at hearing this, I did not betray myself was only due to the strong curb I had put on my feelings. But I had heard his secret by treachery, and now, more than ever, I was eager to keep my identity from him. I longed for the drive to come to an end, and I looked out anxiously to try and see even in the darkness that we were reaching our destination.

"Yes, Henriette, those haunting eyes of hers have saved me, so far," he began again. "Saved me, even when it seemed as if all the fiends in hell were just dragging and forcing me to take it. I didn't. More than once the thing was all but between my lips; but she saved me. But I must see her again, or I shan't hold out. I must hear her voice and feel the touch of her hand. Where is she, Henriette? Where is she? That's one of the questions you shall answer. Gustav says she has gone to Paris. They told me the same at your house to-day—I was there twice, though you didn't know it. And you'll have to tell me that among the other things. You can tell me that now," he said almost fiercely, as he bent toward me again and stretched out a hand as if to seize mine.

I gave up my secret for lost; but the carriage slackened suddenly and with a quick swerve drove into the gates of the house.

Karl let the windows down and peered out curiously; and when the carriage door was opened by the footman, he got out and stood offering me a hand to alight. But I gathered my cloak carefully about me and springing out ran past him and fled into the house and upstairs as fast as I could, whispering to James Perry who had opened the door to come after me presently.

I chose a room at random and locking the door behind me, I flung myself on the bed in the dark, face downwards, and burst into a tempest of hysterical tears.

They were tears of neither pleasure nor grief. They were violent but without passion; and came rather as the swift loosening of the pent strain of excitement during the drive from the city. At least so I thought.

I do not think I had shed a tear since my uncle's death until that moment; and although they gave me intense relief, I remember feeling almost ashamed of myself for my weakness. To cry like a hysterical woman was so out of character with my resolve to play a man's part in this struggle!

The tempest was soon over, and I sat on the side of the bed and took off the veil and threw aside the cloak which had been so valuable a disguise, and was drawing the pins out of my hat when I remembered that I must be careful not to disarrange my hair. I was going to pretend to Karl that I had been in the house all the time; and my appearance must bear out that story.

I groped my way to the dressing-table by the window and fumbled about for a match to get a light of some kind; and finding none, drew up the blind. The moon had risen, and this gave a faint light; but it was not enough for my purpose, so I pulled back the curtain, glancing out as I did so.

The window looked upon the garden in the front, and I stood a moment recalling the plan of the house as I had fixed it in my mind when I had gone over it.

I remembered then what for the instant I had stupidly forgotten; that the electric light was installed, and I was turning away to find the switch, when I caught sight of a man moving in the shrubbery.

I thought at first it might be Karl, smoking, or Perry or his son on watch; but it was not. The figure was much too tall for either of the Perrys; and the movements too stealthy and cautious for Karl.

The light was not sufficient for me to get anything like a clear view of the man; yet as he moved there was something about him that seemed familiar. I watched him with growing interest; and presently, having apparently made sure that he was unobserved, he crossed the moonlit grass quickly to the window of the room that was directly underneath mine.

I recognized him then. It was Colonel Katona.

I threw open my window noisily; and he darted away under the shadow of the trees and hurried out of the garden.

It was no mere chance then that he had been in the Radialstrasse at the moment when the carriage was to be there. Some one had brought him there to be a witness of Karl's escapade. Who had done so, and why? Not Karl; nor Madame d'Artelle; and no one else had known of it but Gustav and myself.

I had seen him speak to Gustav as the carriage wheeled round—wait, I recalled the two furtive glances which Gustav had cast about as he had come up to the carriage with Karl; and the expression of satisfaction after the second of them.

This was Gustav's work, then. And why had he done it? Why had he brought Colonel Katona, of all men in Pesth, to see Karl run away with Madame d'Artelle? Had any other man been picked out, I would have said it was merely that there might be an independent witness. But Colonel Katona—and then the reason seemed to flash into my thoughts, suggesting a scheme subtle and treacherous enough to be worthy of even the worst thoughts I had ever had of Count Gustav.

I thought rapidly how I could put this new idea of