Part 30 (1/2)

”No one bothers so much about dressing now, stay and dine as you are.”

”Yes, do,” chimed in Stanisla.s.s timidly in Russian, ”we should be so charmed.”

”Very well--I will dine--but I must change. I shall not be long though.

Begin dinner without me, I will join you before the fish.” And with no further waste of words he left them.

Harietta pushed Stanisla.s.s gently from the room with an injunction to be quick--and then she returned and held out her arms to Ferdinand Ardayre.

”Now you must not be jealous, Ferdie pet, about Verisschenzko,” and she patted him. ”It is business--I must talk to him to-night; he has an idea that you and I are not favourable to the Allies,” and she laughed delightedly, ”and I must get him off this notion!”

Ferdinand Ardayre looked sullen; he was burning with jealousy.

”Will you make it up to me afterwards?”

”But, of course, in the usual way!” and with one of her wonderful kisses Harietta went laughing from the room.

Left alone, the young man gave himself a morphine _piqure_, and then sat down and held his head in his hands.

He had heard, as he had told Harietta earlier in the afternoon, that his brother's wife was going to have a child, and he could find no way of proving legally that it could not be John's, so his venom had grown with his impotence.

His mother had said to him once:

”The accursed English will always beat us, my son. Thy real father would have put poison in their coffee. We can only hope for revenge some day. I fear we shall never gain our desires. The old fool whom thou callest father must be sucked dry of everything while he lives, because no quarter will be given us once the breath is out of his body.”

Was this true? Must the English always beat him? He remembered his hatred of Denzil while at Eton, and the dog's life he had often led there. Well, he would hit back with an adder's sting when the chance came to him. He would like to see both Ardayres ruined and England herself in the dust, numbed and conquered. All his English life and education had never made him anything but an alien in thought and appearance.

It was his powerlessness which enraged him, but surely the day must come when he could make some of them suffer.

Harietta had not appeared in the hall when Verisschenzko returned dressed, and she even kept all three men waiting for about ten minutes, and then swept in resplendent in yellow brocade and the gardenias, when the clock had struck nine and most of the other diners were having their coffee.

The atmosphere of restraint and depression was a constant source of resentment to her. It was all very well to be dignified and refined for some definite end, like securing an unquestioned position, but it was a weariness of the flesh to have to keep up this role month after month with no excitement or reward, and every now and then she felt that she must break out even in small ways by wearing too gorgeous and unsuitable raiment. She wished that Germany would be quick about winning, then things could settle down and she could begin her social career again.

”It don't amount to a row of pins to the people who want to enjoy themselves, as I do, if their country is beaten or not; it'll all be the same six months after peace is declared, so I'm all for knocking whichever seems feeblest out quickly,” she had said to Ferdinand, ”and Paris will always be top of the world for clothes and things that one wants, so what do old politics matter?”

She derived some pleasure out of the sensation she created when she went into a restaurant, and she really looked extraordinarily handsome.

The dinner amused her, too; it was entertaining to make Ferdinand jealous. The emotions of Stanisla.s.s had ceased to count to her in any way whatsoever.

Verisschenzko had discovered what he required in regard to Ferdinand Ardayre before they went into the hall for coffee--there was nothing further to be gained by having another tete-a-tete with Harietta, so he sat down by Stanisla.s.s and suggested that the other two should go on to the Coliseum without them, and Harietta was obliged to depart reluctantly with Ferdinand, having arranged that Stepan should let her know, directly he arrived in Paris, whither he was going in a day or two also.

When she had left them Stanisla.s.s Boleski turned melancholy eyes to his old friend, but remained silent.

”Has it been worth it?” Verisschenzko asked, with certain feeling--they had relapsed into Russian.

Stanisla.s.s sighed deeply.

”No--far from it--I am broken and finished, Stepan, she has devoured my soul--”