"I responsible?" I cried.
"Do you deny it?" she retorted.
I had risen to my feet unconsciously, and she arose to face me.
"I deny it absolutely!" I answered. "The suggestion is an outrage!"
For sole answer she touched a little silver gong which stood upon the table. A servant appeared in answer to the sound, and the baroness, without turning her head towards him, said, "Send my compliments to Miss Pleyel, and let her know Captain Fyffe has called."
I stood rooted in astonishment.
CHAPTER XI
The baroness walked to the window as the servant retired, throwing upon me as she went by a look of mingled triumph and disdain. I had no word to say for myself, and I awaited the progress of events with wonder. The baroness looked out upon the street, with her tiny foot tapping at the carpet, until the servant returned.
"Well?" said she, imperatively turning on him.
The man looked confused and stammered.
"Well?" she repeated, with an angry impatience.
"I beg your pardon, Madame la Baronne, but I am to say--"
"You are to say?" she echoed, scornfully, seeing that he paused and stammered anew. "Say what you are to say."
"Perhaps it would be better," the man said, "if I spoke to madame alone."
"Say what you have to say," his mistress commanded. "I presume you have an answer from Miss Pleyel?"
The man who was a young and by no means ill-looking fellow, was evidently in considerable distress. "It is not my fault, Madame la Baronne," he said, with an appealing glance at me, "but Miss Pleyel"s message is that she declines to meet Captain Fyffe under any circ.u.mstances."
"That will do," said his mistress. "You can go."
The man retired once more. I could see that the baroness was disappointed, but she made the best of the circ.u.mstances.
"I am not surprised," she said, with as fine an expression of scorn as she could command.
"Nor am I," I responded. "It is natural that Miss Pleyel should not wish to meet one who knew her fifteen years ago."
"It is like a man and a soldier," she said, "to presume upon the natural delicacy of a lady under such circ.u.mstances. She shrinks from you and fears you. She dare not encounter you even in the presence of so dear a friend as I am. But I do not shrink from you, Captain Fyffe, and I am not afraid of you. I tell you once more that I think your coming here is, all things considered, as pretty a piece of audacity as I can remember."
"Madame," I answered, "I came here with a purpose. When I have fulfilled that purpose I will relieve you of my presence."
"Go on," she interjected, contemptuously.
"The position is both difficult and delicate, but my duty is plain, and I see no way of escape from it."
"Your duty to yourself," said the baroness, "is plain enough. Such a man as I see you now to be will make it his duty, at any cost, to defend himself."
"To defend himself from what, madame?" I asked, surprised at her boldness.
"From the plain truth," she answered, with an expression of anger and disdain which, if not real, was an excellent bit of acting in its way.
"The brave Captain Fyffe is ambitious, and has made up his mind to marry money; but Miss Rossano, whom I have the honor to know, might shrink from Captain Fyffe if she knew him to be not merely a penniless adventurer, but a perjured and heartless villain."
"Madame," I replied, "I will not be so poor a diplomatist as to lose my temper over these charges. There are hundreds of people still alive in my native place to whom Miss Pleyel"s miserable history is known, and such a charge as you are making could only excite derision if it were openly brought against me."
"You came here with a purpose," she said, coldly. "I shall be obliged if you will fulfil your purpose, and--"
"When I have fulfilled my purpose I will go. I will be as brief as I can. When I was a lad of twenty I was desperately in love with Miss Constance Pleyel, or thought I was, which at that time of life is pretty much the same thing."
"It will serve at any time of life," said the baroness. She listened with an air of aversion and impatience, which made a painful task more painful to perform.
"My father was a half-pay officer," I went on, "very poor and very proud. Miss Pleyel"s father was a tradesman, an Austrian Jew, rich, vulgar, and ostentatious."
"Rich, certainly," the baroness responded. "I can congratulate you on one point, Captain Fyffe; you have not yet, so far as I can learn, suffered sentiment to blind you to the charms of wealth."
I pa.s.sed the sneer. When a man is resolutely bent upon a journey he does not stop to fight the flies that tease him.
"We moved in different circles. I spoke to Miss Pleyel perhaps a dozen times, but in the hot enthusiasm of youthful love I wrote to her often."
"I have seen your letters," said the baroness, with a short, contemptuous laugh. "They might have deceived any woman."
I allowed myself to be diverted for a moment.
"She keeps them? It is a sign of grace in her that she cares, after so many years, to remember an honest, boyish pa.s.sion."
"A sign of grace?" cried the baroness, pa.s.sionately. "Oh, I lose patience with this cool infamy!"
Now all this time has gone by I can recall this scene as if it were a bit of stage play; and now that I can read every motive and understand every movement, I am inclined to think the baroness"s part in it the finest piece of stage work I have ever seen.
"If you will permit me, madame, I will try to put the case in such a way that there shall be no mistake as to what I mean to say. I saw Miss Pleyel rarely, and never once in private. I wrote to her often; I wrote reams of boyish nonsense, which was all meant in fiery earnest then.
Then news came. Miss Pleyel ran away from her father"s house with Colonel Hill-yard, a man of wealth, a married man with a large family, and, in spite of that fact, a notorious _roue_. They lived abroad for six months, and Miss Pleyel ran away from Colonel Hillyard with a Russian officer, with whom she went to St. Petersburg, where she caught a grand duke, who was so far fascinated as to contract a morganatic marriage with her. Since that time Miss Pleyel"s adventures have been before the world. Her name has been lost under a score of aliases, but there is no pretence between you and me, and no dispute as to her ident.i.ty."
"Captain Fyffe," said the baroness, "I do not yet think so poorly of you as to believe that you have invented this abominable story, but I can tell you that it is, from beginning to end, a tissue of falsehoods."
"Pardon me, madame," I responded, "there is no man living who knows that wretched history half so well as I do."
"Oh, you men, you men!" cried the baroness, sweeping her little white hands towards the ceiling, and wringing them above her head with a tragic gesture. She turned upon me suddenly, with an admirable burst of pa.s.sion and feeling. "Captain Fyffe, I am a woman of the world; I am _experimentee_--unhappily for me, too, too bitterly experienced. Believe me, I already have the very poorest opinion of your s.e.x. I beseech you not to lower it further."
"The most casual inquiry," I answered, "if you should care to make it, will confirm every word I have so far spoken. And now I need detain you little longer. It is a terrible thing to say to a lady, but it must be said. It is all the more terrible to say, because I had at one time a sentimental worship for that poor creature who has proved herself so often to be unworthy of any honest man"s regard. No lady who knows the reputation of Miss Constance Pleyel, or who, being warned of her reputation, declines to test the truth of the warning and remains her friend, can be permitted to a.s.sociate, to my knowledge, with anybody for whom I entertain the slightest regard or esteem."
"Do I understand you to threaten me, Captain Fyffe?" asked the baroness.
"You must permit me for a moment to instruct you. My position in society is secure enough to enable me to defend any _protegee_ of mine against any insinuation which Captain Fyffe may make."
"I make no insinuation," I returned. "I lay plain facts before you. I will send you by messenger, within an hour, the names and addresses of a score of people who know the facts of the case. You shall, if you choose, employ an agent, whose charges I will defray, and whose report I will never ask to see."