Part 38 (1/2)
The two men turned about. Annesley had fainted in his chair. Both Warburton and Karloff mechanically started forward to offer aid, but she repelled their approach.
”Do not come near me; you have done enough. Father, dear!” She slapped the colonel's wrists and unloosed his collar.
The antagonists, forgetting their own battle, stood silently watching hers. Warburton's mind was first to clear, and without a moment's hesitation he darted from the room and immediately returned with a gla.s.s of water. He held it out to the girl. Their glances clashed; a thousand mute, angry questions in her eyes, a thousand mute, humble answers in his. She accepted the gla.s.s, and her hand trembled as she dipped her fingers into the cool depths and flecked the drops into the unconscious man's face.
Meanwhile Karloff stood with folded arms, staring melancholically into the grate, where his dreams had disappeared in smoke. By and by the colonel sighed and opened his eyes. For a time he did not know where he was, and his gaze wandered mistily from face to face. Then recollection came back to him, recollection bristling with thorns. He struggled to his feet and faced Warburton. The girl put her arms around him to steady him, but he gently disengaged himself.
”Are you from the secret service, sir? If so, I am ready to accompany you wherever you say. I, who have left my blood on many a battleground, was about to commit a treasonable act. Allow me first to straighten up my affairs, then you may do with me as you please. I am guilty of a crime; I have the courage to pay the penalty.” His calm was extraordinary, and even Karloff looked at him with a sparkle of admiration.
As a plummet plunges into the sea, so the girl's look plunged into Warburton's soul; and had he been an officer of the law, he knew that he would have utterly disregarded his duty.
”I am not a secret service man, sir,” he replied unevenly. ”If I were,”--pointing to the grate, ”your plans would not have fed the fire.”
”Who are you, then, and what do you in my house in this guise?”--proudly.
”I am your head stable-man--for the present. It was all by chance. I came into this room yesterday to get a book on veterinary surgery. I accidentally saw a plan. I have been a soldier. I knew that such a thing had no rightful place in this house.... I was coming across the lawn, when I looked into the window. ... It is not for me to judge you, sir. My duty lay in destroying those plans before they harmed any one.”
”No, it is not for you to judge me,” said the colonel. ”I have gambled away my daughter's fortune. To keep her in ignorance of the fact and to return to her the amount I had wrongfully used, I consented to sell to Russia the coast fortification plans of my country, such as I could draw from memory. No, it is not for you to judge me; only G.o.d has the right to do that.”
”I am only a groom,” said Warburton, simply. ”What I have heard I shall forget.”
Ah, had he but looked at the girl's face then!
A change came over Karloff's countenance; his shoulders drooped; the melancholy fire died out of his face and eyes. With an air of resignation and a clear sense of the proportion of things, he reached out and took up the note upon which Annesley had scrawled his signature.
Warburton, always alert, seized the count's wrist. He saw the name of a bank and the sum of five figures.
”What is this?” he demanded.
”It is mine,” replied the count, haughtily.
Warburton released him.
”He speaks truly,” said the colonel. ”It is his.”
”The hour of madness is past,” the Russian began, slowly and musically.
The tone was musing. He seemed oblivious of his surroundings and that three pairs of curious eyes were leveled in his direction. He studied the note, creased it, drew it through his fingers, smoothed it and caressed it. ”And I should have done exactly as I threatened. There is, then, a Providence which watches jealously over the innocent? And I was a skeptic!... Two hundred thousand dollars,”--picking up the packet of banknotes and balancing it on his hand. ”Well, it is a sum large enough to tempt any man. How the plans and schemes of men crumble to the touch! Ambition is but the pursuit of mirages.... Mademoiselle, you will never know what the ignominy of this moment has cost me--nor how well I love you. I come of a race of men who pursue their heart's desire through fire and water. Obstacles are nothing; the end is everything. In Europe I should have won, in honor or in dishonor. But this American people, I do not quite understand them; and that is why I have played the villain to no purpose.”
He paused, and a sad, bitter smile played over his face.
”Mademoiselle,” he continued, ”henceforth, wherever I may go, your face and the sound of your voice shall abide with me. I do not ask you to forget, but I ask you to forgive.” Again he paused.
She uttered no sound.
”Well, one does not forget nor forgive these things in so short a time.
And, after all, it was your own father's folly. Fate threw him across my path at a critical moment--but I had reckoned without you. Your father is a brave man, for he had the courage to offer himself to the law; I have the courage to give you up. I, too, am a soldier; I recognize the value of retreat.” To Warburton he said: ”A groom, a hostler, to upset such plans as these! I do not know who you are, sir, nor how to account for your timely and peculiar appearance. But I fully recognize the falseness of your presence here. Eh, well, this is what comes of race prejudice, the senseless battle which has always been and always will be waged between the n.o.ble and the peasant. Had I observed you at the proper time, our positions might relatively have been changed. Useless retrospection!” To Annesley: ”Sir, we are equally culpable. Here is this note of yours. I might, as a small contribution toward righting the comparative wrong which I have done you, I might cast it into the fire. But between gentlemen, situated as we are, the act would be as useless as it would be impossible. I might destroy the note, but you would refuse to accept such generosity at my hands,--which is well.”