After a moment she went on resolutely: "As I said before, I do not know that my suspicions are correct. I have not even breathed them to my father. He would have laughed at me. My husband is a Graustarkian, even as I am, but there is this distinction between us: he despises Graustark, while I love her in every drop of my blood. I know that in his heart he has never ceased to brew evil for the throne that disgraced him. He openly expresses his hatred for the present dynasty, and has more than once said in public gatherings that he could cheerfully a.s.sist in its utter destruction. That, of course, is commonly known in Graustark, where he is scorned and derided. But he is not a man to serve his hatred with mere idle words and inaction." She stopped for a moment, and then cried impulsively: "I must first know that you will not consider me base and disloyal in saying these things to you. After all, he is my husband."
He saw the faint curl of her lip. "Before that," he argued simply, "you were a daughter of Graustark. You were not born to serve a cause that means evil to the dear land. Graustark first made you n.o.ble; you can"t go back on that, you know. Don"t let your husband degrade you. I think you can see how I feel about it. Please believe that I know you can do no wrong."
"Thank you," she said, returning the look in his earnest grey eyes with one in which the utmost confidence shone. "You are the only man to whom I feel sure that I can reveal myself and be quite understood. It isn"t as if I had positive facts to divulge, for I have not; they are suspicions, fears, that"s all, but they are no longer vague shapes to me; they mean something."
"Tell me," he said quietly. He seemed to square his broad shoulders and to set his jaw firmly, as if to resist physical attack. She knew she had come with her fears to a man in whose face it was declared that he could laugh at substance as well as shadow.
"I am seeing you here in this big room, openly, for the simple reason that if I am being watched this manner of meeting may be above suspicion. We may speak freely here, for we cannot be heard unless we raise our voices. Don"t betray surprise or consternation. The eyes of the wall may be better than its ears."
"You don"t mean to say you are being watched here in your father"s house?" he demanded.
"I don"t know. This I do know: the Count has many spies in Edelweiss. He is systematically apprised of everything that occurs at court, in the city, or in the council chamber. So you see, he is being well served, whether to an evil purpose or to satisfy his own innate curiosity, I do not know. He has reports almost daily,--voluminous things, partly in cipher, partly free, and he is forever sending men away on secret, mysterious missions. Understand, I do not know that he is actually planning disaster to Graustark. Day before yesterday I saw his secretary in the streets--a man who has been in his employ for five years or more and who now pretends to be a lawyer here. His name is Brutus. I spoke with him. He said that he had left the Count six weeks ago in Vienna, determined to set out for himself in his chosen profession. He knows, of course, that I am not and never have been in the confidences of my husband. I asked him if it was known in Edelweiss that he had served the Count as secretary. He promptly handed me one of his business cards, on which he refers to himself as the former trusted and confidential secretary of Count Marlanx. Now, I happen to know that he is still in my husband"s service,--or was no longer ago than last week."
"My dear Countess, he may be serving him legitimately as an attorney.
There would be nothing strange in that."
"But he is still serving him as confidential secretary. He is here for a purpose, as my husband"s representative. I have not been asleep all these months at Schloss Marlanx. I have seen and heard enough to convince me that some great movement is on foot. My intelligence tells me that it has to do with Graustark. As he wishes the Prince no good, it must be for evil." "But there is nothing he can do. He has no following here. The Prince is adored by the people. Count Marlanx would not be such a fool as to--"
"He is no fool," she interrupted quickly. "That"s why I am afraid. If he is plotting against the Crown, you may depend upon it he is laying his plans well. John Tullis, that man is a devil--a devil incarnate." She turned her face away.
A spasm of utter repugnance crossed her face; she shuddered so violently that his hand went forth to clutch the fingers that trembled on the arm of the chair. He held them in his firm grasp for a moment. They looked into each other"s eyes and he saw the flicker of undisguised horror in hers. An instant later she was herself again. Withdrawing her hand, she added, with a short laugh of derision: "Still I did not expect heaven, so why complain."
"But you are an angel," he blurted out.
"I don"t believe the Count will agree to that," she said, with a reflective twinkle in her dark eyes. "He has not found me especially angelic. If you imagine that I cannot scratch back, my dear friend, you are very much mistaken. I have had the pleasure of giving him more than one bad half hour. You may be sure he has never called me an angel.
Quite the other thing, I a.s.sure you. But we are straying from the point."
"Wait a moment, please," he commanded. "I want to say to you here and now: you are the gentlest, loveliest woman I have ever known. I don"t say it idly. I mean it. If you gave him half as good as he sent, I rejoice in your spirit. Now, I want to ask if you expect to go back to live with the da--with him."
"That, Mr. Tullis, is hardly a matter I can discuss with you," she said gently, and he was not offended.
"Perhaps not, Countess, but now is the time for you to decide the issue.
Why should you return to Castle Marlanx? Why keep up the farce--or I might say, tragedy--any longer? You love Graustark. You love the Prince.
You betray them both by consorting with their harshest foe. Oh, I could tell you a thousand reasons why--"
"We haven"t time for them," she interrupted, with mock despair in her face. "Besides, I said we cannot discuss it. It requires no learned argument to move me, one way or the other. I can decide for myself."
"You should divorce him," he said harshly.
She laughed easily, softly. "My good friend, if I did that, I"d lose your friendship." He opened his lips to remonstrate, but suddenly caught the undercurrent of the naive remark.
"By Jove," he said, his eyes glowing, "you must not risk finding me too obtuse."
"Bravo!" she cried. "You are improving."
"I could provide a splendid subst.i.tute for the friendship you speak of,"
he said coolly.
"Poof! What is that to me? I could have a hundred lovers--but, ach, friends are the scarcest things in the world. I prefer friendship. It lasts. There! I see disapproval in your face! You Americans are so literal." She gazed into the fireplace for a moment, her lips parted in a whimsical smile. He waited for her to go on; the words were on her tongue"s end, he could tell. "A divorce at twenty-five. I believe that is the accepted age, isn"t it? If one gets beyond that, she--but, enough of this!" She sprang to her feet and stood before him, the flash dying in her eyes even as it was born that he might see so briefly. "We diverge! You must go soon. It is best not to be seen leaving here at a very late hour--especially as my father is known to be away. I am afraid of Peter Brutus. He is here to watch--_everybody_."
She was leaning against the great carved mantel post, a tall, slender, lissome creature, exquisitely gowned in rarest Irish lace, her bare neck and shoulders gleaming white against the dull timbers beyond, the faint glow from the embers creeping up to her face with the insistence of a maiden"s flush. He gazed in rapt admiration, his heart thumping like fury in his great breast. She was little more than a girl, this wife of old Marlanx, and yet how wise, how clever, how brilliant she was!
A face of unusual pallor and extremely patrician in its modelling, surmounted by a coiffure so black that it could be compared only to ebony--black and almost gleaming with the life that was in it. It came low on her forehead, shading the wondrous dark eyes--eyes that were a deep yellowish green in their division between grey and black, eyes that were soft and luminous and unwaveringly steadfast, impelling in their power to fascinate, yet even more dangerously compa.s.sionate when put to the test that tries woman"s vanity.
There were diamonds on her long, tapering fingers, and a rope of pearls in her hair. A single wide gold band encircled her arm above the elbow, an arm-band as old as the princ.i.p.ality itself, for it had been worn by twenty fair ancestors before her. The n.o.blewomen of Graustark never wore bracelets on their wrists; always the wide chased gold band on the upper arm. There was a day, not so far back in history, when they wore bands on their ankles.
She was well named Ingomede, the Beautiful.
A soft, almost imperceptible perfume, languorous in its appeal to the senses, exuded from this perfect creation; added to this, the subtle, unfailing scent of young womanhood; the warm, alive feel of her presence in the atmosphere; a suggestion of something sensuous, clean, pure, delicious. The undescribable.
"Does Baron Dangloss know this man Brutus?" asked Tullis, arising to stand beside her. A sub-conscious, triumphant thrill shot through him as an instantaneous flash of his own physical superiority over this girl"s husband came over him. He was young and strong and vital. He could feel the sensation of being strong; he tingled with the glory of it. He was thirty-five, Marlanx seventy. He wondered if Marlanx had ever been as strong as he.
"I don"t know," she said thoughtfully. "I have not spoken to him concerning Brutus. Perhaps he knows. The Baron is very wise. Let me tell you how I happen to know that Peter Brutus is still serving Count Marlanx and why I think his presence signifies a crisis of some sort."
Tullis stood facing the great fireplace, his back to the hail. He observed that she looked toward the doors quite as often as she looked at him; it struck him that she was extremely cautious despite her apparent ease.
Her voice, always low and even, second lower still. "In the first place, I have a faithful friend in one of the oldest retainers at Schloss Marlanx. His daughter is my maid. She is here with me now. The old man came to see Josepha one day last week. He had accompanied Count Marlanx to the town of Balak, which is in Axphain, a mile beyond the Graustark line. Peter Brutus was with my husband in Balak for two days. They were closeted together from morning till night in the house where Marlanx was stopping. At the end of two days Brutus went away, but he carried with him a vast sum of money provided by my husband. It was given out that he was on his way to Serros in Dawsbergen, where he expected to purchase a business block for his master. Marlanx waited another day in Balak, permitting Josepha"s father to come on to Edelweiss with a message for me and to see his daughter. He--"
"And Josepha"s father saw Brutus in Edelweiss?"
"No. But he did see him going into Balak as he left for Edelweiss that morning. He wore a disguise, but Jacob says he could not be mistaken.
Moreover, he was accompanied by several men whom he recognised as Graustark mountaineers and hunters of rather unsavoury reputation. They left Brutus at the gates of Balak and went off into the hills. All this happened before I knew that Peter was living in Edelweiss. When I saw him here, I knew at once that his presence meant something sinister. I can put many things together that once puzzled me--the comings and goings of months, the secret reports and consultations, the queer looking men who came to the Castle, the long absences of my husband and my--my own virtual imprisonment--yes, imprisonment. I was not permitted to leave the castle for days at a time during his absences."
"Surely you will not go back again"--he began hotly.
"Sh!" She put a finger to her lips. A man-servant was quietly crossing the hall just off the library. "He is a new man. I do not like his appearance."
"Do you think he heard us or observed anything? I can make short work of him if--" He paused significantly. She smiled up into his face.
"He did not hear anything. We"ve frightened him off, if he intended to play the eavesdropper." The servant had disappeared through a door at the end of the hall.
"Then there were the great sums of money that my husband sent off from time to time, and the strange boxes that came overland to the castle and later went away again as secretly as they came. Mr. Tullis, I am confident in my mind that those boxes contained firearms and ammunition.
I have thought it all out. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that I can almost see those firearms stored away in the caves and cabins outside of Edelweiss, ready for instant use when the signal comes."
"G.o.d! An uprising? A plot so huge as that?" he gasped, amazed. It is fortunate that he was not facing the door; the same servant, pa.s.sing once more, might have seen the tell-tale consternation in his eyes. "It cannot be possible! Why, Dangloss and his men would have scented it long ago."
"I have not said that I am sure of anything, remember that. I leave it to you to a.n.a.lyse. You have the foundation on which to work. I"d advise you to waste no time. Something tells me that the crisis is near at hand."
"Why should Josepha"s father tell these things to you?"
"Because, if you will pardon my frankness, I have protected his daughter against Count Marlanx. He understands. And yet he would not betray a trust imposed upon him even by the Count. He has only told me what any one else might have seen with his own eyes. Wait! The new servant is in the hall again." She clapped her hands sharply and called out "Franz!"
The new man appeared in the doorway almost on the instant. "You may replenish the fire, Franz." The man, a sallow, precise fellow, crossed deliberately and poked the half dead fire; with scrupulous care he selected two great chunks of wood from the hopper near by and laid them on the coals, the others watching his movements with curious interest.
There was nothing about the fellow to indicate that he was other than what he pretended to be.
"Isn"t it strange that we should have fires in July?" she asked casually. "The mountain air and the night fogs make it absolutely necessary in these big old houses."
"We had a jolly fire in the Prince"s room when I left the Castle. Our monarch is subject to croup, you see."
"That is all, Franz." The man bowed and left the room. "What do you think of him?" she asked, after a moment.