"Say a lady," she said, haughtily, and the man, impressed by her mien, threw open the door.
Mrs. Carey found herself in the presence of a large, heavily built man, with a bald head and long, coal-black beard, who was sitting at a desk.
He was smoking, and the s.p.a.cious but bare room was thick with tobacco smoke. A table, on which were empty bottles and the remains of a lunch, stood in one corner. Several men, who also had cigars in their mouths, were sprawling on an enamel cloth lounge in the bay-window which commanded the street. At her entrance these latter arose, and, at a glance from their chief at the desk, shambled out of the room by a side door, casting, however, over their shoulders glances of curiosity and surprise. She waited until they had closed the door, then lifted her veil.
President Bagshaw rose and made a bow, which was an unusual act of homage on his part, for he was a woman-hater as well as an atheist. He even removed the cigar from his mouth.
"What can I do for you, madam?" he asked.
"I have important information for the government." She paused an instant. "Are we quite alone?"
The President went to the side door, and carefully bolted it. Then he resumed his seat, and, resting his ponderous, seamy jaw upon the flat of his hand, waited for her to begin. He was used to all sorts of devices as a prelude to requests for office or emolument, and his expression betokened little interest or expectation. Had not the serious character of the communication she was about to make rendered coquetry at the moment distasteful to Mrs. Carey, she would a.s.suredly have been tempted to tamper with the indifference of this matter-of-fact personage, who even already had recovered from the trifling shock to his principles which her entrance had caused.
"I have proofs," said she in a low tone, "of a serious conspiracy among the Royalists."
His countenance changed a little, and a contracted brow of a business man became noticeable. "In what part of the Republic?" he asked.
"It is a widely concerted plot in which all the leading Royalists in the country are engaged. The King himself is privy to the affair. The outbreak is to occur at Aldershot on the 24th of November. Many of the troops have been suborned."
"Who are the leaders of this conspiracy?"
"The prime movers are Sir John Dacre and Lord Brompton. It was at the latter"s house that I learned the particulars of the affair."
Clytemnestra never plied the sword more ruthlessly than this jealous woman doomed to destruction the man who had spurned her love.
The President was silent a moment. "Have you proofs of what you tell me?"
She took from her m.u.f.f Colonel Arundel"s letter and handed it to him.
"You will find there, sir, a list of the leading rebels and the army officers implicated."
He scanned it eagerly. "H"m; yes, this speaks for itself. And what," he continued presently, with a politician"s quick sense, "can I do for you in return?" The idea of being loyal for nothing would never have occurred to President Bagshaw.
"The time may come when I shall ask a favor of the government, but not to-day," said Mrs. Carey. "My only request is that my name shall not be mentioned in the matter. Is that agreed upon?"
"Certainly, if you desire it. But, madam," continued the demagogue, "the people are grateful to you for the service you have done them."
"You had better ascertain first, Mr. President, that my information is authentic," she said, rising and drawing about her comely shoulders the folds of her cloak, as though to silence the conflicting forces of love and vengeance working in her soul.
The great man opened the door for her himself. She bent him a stately, solemn courtesy, and covering her face pa.s.sed slowly down the stairs.
A telegraph company had an office in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the palace. Here she wrote a message to Jarley Jawkins, which was worded:
"Must postpone journey three weeks. Leave me alone until then. C."
When she had dispatched this she bade the driver stop at Fenton"s, where she picked up her husband and took him to Greenwich for a quiet fish dinner. Oswald asked her, in the course of the meal, what business she had at Buckingham Palace.
"I was trying to have you reappointed to your old place in the Stamp and Sealing-wax Office, and I expect to succeed," was her reply.
CHAPTER IX.
"THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE."
When Geoffrey awakened on the morning after the coaching party, he lay for some minutes dreamily revolving in his head the events of the last two days. He felt that he had reached a crisis in his life, and as he stretched himself on his narrow bed he groaned inwardly at the perplexity and danger of the situation in which he found himself. After his lonely existence he was suddenly in the vortex of the whirlpool. He had promised his life to Sir John Dacre and to his country to be staked upon a hazard, which he thought to be hopeless, and knew to be desperate. He did not think of swerving from this promise, for he felt that he must be true to his order and to high patriotism.
He winced, too, as he thought of the scene with Mrs. Carey in the ruins of the Cathedral. He knew that he could not have averted it, for it had broken upon him with the suddenness of a summer shower. He had entered into a dangerous conspiracy, and had made a deadly enemy on the same day.
He was sure that Miss Windsor had seen the affair in the ruins. He had given the ribbons on the drive home to Dacre, and had taken his place by Maggie"s side on the back seat, but she had been cold and constrained, and had answered his remarks with monosyllables. The party was so gloomy that it was a positive relief when a cold drizzling rain set in, and mackintoshes and cloaks covered up the faces of all, and made conversation difficult. But, after thinking of the dark side of the medal, Geoffrey gave a shrug of his shoulders, and cast off for a moment gloomy thoughts, as a duck shakes off water from its oily plumage.
"Mrs. Carey was right," he said; "love is the great thing, after all; and I love Maggie Windsor. I have little enough to offer her, not even my life, for that I promised to John Dacre, and the reversion is not worth much, I fear. My t.i.tle! Ah, that is an offering indeed; a t.i.tle by courtesy, in a democracy which at the same time sneers at and cringes to it. But I love her, and if a man comes to a woman with a sincere love he will at least be heard."
Then the thought of his promise to Dacre filled his mind and heart, and he groaned aloud.
"How can I speak to her of love, when I am on the verge of this emeute at Aldershot? And yet I cannot give up life without having had the satisfaction of its one joy, its one reality! I love Margaret Windsor, and there is a chance, a bare chance, of her loving me. Why did she pick out my old house, when she knew that I was living here, if she did not wish to see me again? Conspiracy or no conspiracy, my poverty, her riches, go hang. I shall ask for her love this very day."
He had finished a very elaborate toilet for him, and Reynolds appeared to summon him to his breakfast, which the faithful servitor cooked and served to him in the old sitting-room. As Geoffrey cracked his eggs and drank his coffee, Reynolds looked wistfully at his master"s handsome face, for he saw a new expression there--a look bright with hope and the consciousness of an awakened soul--and the old servant wondered whether the beautiful woman, who had visited the house two nights before, had changed his master"s face so. He noticed, too, that Geoffrey was smartly dressed, and that he had tied his neck-tie with great care, and had put on a coat from one of the crack New York tailors, so that when the old servitor disappeared to polish his master"s boots he said to himself:
"The young earl is going courting, for a certainty, and a fine lady he will bring home as his bride. Will she buy back his house and lands for him, I wonder?" And Reynolds smiled to himself as he pictured the head of his beloved family restored to his own again and Ripon House under the faithful Reynolds, major-domo.
The dinner at Ripon House after the coaching-party had been dull indeed.
Mrs. Carey had sent her excuses to Miss Windsor, and the latter, who had seen her head upon Geoffrey"s shoulder in the Cathedral in the morning, was relieved at hearing them.
For within Maggie"s tender heart a love for Geoffrey Ripon had gained the mastery since the interview in the secret chamber. Long had that love haunted her gentle heart, a shade at first, which flitted away for a while, only to return again and trouble her. But just as she had installed her love in the innermost sanctuary, fair and G.o.dlike, she had discovered, as she thought, that her idol had feet of clay; that the man whose lips and tongue told her that he loved her on the one day was on the next saying the same thing with the same lying lips to another woman.
Mrs. Carey had been Geoffrey"s first love. Sir John had told her that, she remembered. "He loves her still and he pretends to care for me because I am rich," she said to herself as she lay tossing sleepless during the night, a dull pang racking her heart with a real physical pain. In the early morning she arose and looked out of the window over toward Geoffrey"s house, down over the lawn and the cliff path and the leafy chestnut trees.
"He is false," she said to herself, thinking of our hero who was sleeping so soundly under the little roof in the valley. "He tried to talk with me on the drive home as if nothing had happened. He is an actor who plays at love, and his eyes and his tongue are under his control as if he were the walking gentleman in the comedy, who kisses the maid while he is waiting in the parlor for the mistress. He does not love Margaret Windsor; he loves her father"s stocks and bonds, and he longs for riches, even with the enc.u.mbrance of a wife."
She smiled bitterly as she thought of the breaking up of her dream of love, and she almost cursed the riches which had weighed her down and had filled her with suspicion of all the men who had ever asked her hand in marriage. She had thought that Geoffrey had been prevented from asking for it two years before because he had felt that she was rich and he was poor. When he had bade her farewell in Paris he had hesitated and tried to say something to her, she remembered, but had compressed his lips into a forced smile and taken his leave of her.
As she looked out the window she heard a rumble of wheels and saw the phaeton rolling Mrs. Carey down to the station.
"What is that woman doing at this hour in the morning?" Maggie asked herself, looking with hot, jealous eyes at the beauty as she sat back in the phaeton. "It is dreadful to have such a person under one"s roof. I hope that she is gone and that she will not return. I suppose, though, that she is to meet Lord Brompton somewhere."
And so it happened that at the moment that Geoffrey felt the first pulsing strength of his love for her, and vowed that he would, despite her riches and his entanglements, strive to gain her, Maggie was strangling her old love for him, and her heart was filled with jealous fears; and the woman whose wild pa.s.sion had ruffled the current of their true love was speeding to London to work their ruin.
Breakfast at Ripon House was a straggling, informal meal, and the men came down in pink coats. They were going hunting on an anise-seed trail, and ordered what they wished, standing by the side-board and eating.
Maggie, after the men had followed the hounds, left the other ladies gossiping together in the library before the fire.
She walked down the cliff path which led to the shingle beach, upon which the small craft of the fishermen in the little village were hauled up.
Against one of the boats a fisherman, dressed in oil-skins, was leaning.
He had a paint-brush in his hand, and he was gazing out ruefully over the bay, which was lashed into white caps by the strong breeze. When he saw Maggie, he pulled at his forelock and set to work vigorously with his paint-brush on the stern of his boat, daubing with the black paint over the name of the craft. As the fisherman obliterated the name, Maggie noticed that his hand trembled and that he turned his head away from her that she might not see his face.
"What are you doing, my good man?" she asked, coming near him, for she saw that he was in distress.