Part 26 (2/2)
The _Corneille_, the old wooden s.h.i.+p which had conveyed Madame de Bourbon out of the range of the guns and the death-ray, was brought back the next morning by the _Nadine_ and the _Was.h.i.+ngton_, whose business it had been to stop the escape of any French or Russian vessel from the waters of Boothia, and as she was immediately available for the service, she carried Madame de Bourbon back to France. With her she took a small box of oak, which contained all that the death-ray had left of Adelaide de Conde, Marquise de Montpensier, the last, save herself, of the daughters of the old line of the Bourbons.
A similar casket containing the bones of Sophie Valdemar and her father were sent under her care to the count's brother, whose place in Petersburg was less than a hundred yards distant from the German Emba.s.sy, the scene of the reception where what was now but dry bones, dust, and ashes, had been life and beauty and subtly working brains, plotting for the possession of the world-empire, whose throne was not now in any of the splendid capitals of Europe, or of the east, or west, but within the four-square limits--measuring four hundred feet each way--within which the World Masters reigned impregnable and supreme.
EPILOGUE
The short Northern summer was drawing rapidly to its close when Chrysie and Hardress were p.r.o.nounced fit to travel. Hardress had had a very narrow shave, for one of the count's bullets had grazed the right lung, and the wound had brought on an acute attack of pleural inflammation.
Chrysie's wounds had healed within a fortnight, and as soon as she was able to get about she did her best to supplant Lady Olive as nurse in the sickroom.
”You may be his sister,” she said, in answer to a strong protest from Lady Olive, ”and you're just as good a sister as a man wants to have; but I hope I'm going to be something more than a sister; and so, if he's going to be mine and I'm going to be his, I want to do the rest.
After all, you see it's only a sort of looking after one's own property.”
Just at this moment Hardress woke up and turned a languid head and a pair of weary and yet eager eyes upon the two girls.
”Chrysie,” he said, in a thick, hoa.r.s.e whisper, and yet through smiling lips, ”in the speech of your own country, you've got it in once. There's just one thing I want now to make me well. You know what it is. Come and give it me.”
”Why, you mean thing!” said Chrysie, going towards the bed, ”I believe you've heard everything we've been saying.”
”Some of it,” he whispered. ”What about that reserve--that territory, you know, that I was supposed to have an option on in Buffalo?”
”Buffalo's not Boothia, Shafto,” she replied, using his Christian name for the first time since they had known each other; ”but the reserve's all right. I guess you've only got to take up your option when you want it.”
”Then I'll take it now,” he whispered again, looking weariedly and yet with an infinite longing into her eyes.
”And so you shall,” she said, leaning down over the bed. ”You have done the work--you and Lord Orrel and poppa. You've done everything that you said you would; you're masters of the world, and, as far as mortals can be, controllers of human destiny--you and Doctor Lamson.
He began it, didn't he? If it hadn't been for him and his knowledge you'd have done nothing at all. And he's got his reward too. That's so; isn't it, Olive? Yes; you can tell the story afterwards, but you and I are going to marry two of the world masters, and we're each of us going to have a world master for father, and--well, I guess that's about all there is in it. And now I'm going to seal the contract.”
She bent her head and kissed Hardress's pale but still smiling lips, and just at that moment there was a knock at the door. Lady Olive almost involuntarily said, ”Come in,” and Doctor Lamson, who had, next to Emil Fargeau, been the working genius of the whole vast scheme which the dead savant had worked out in his laboratory at Stra.s.sburg, came in.
Miss Chrysie, flus.h.i.+ng and bright-eyed, straightened herself up, looking most innocently guilty. Doctor Lamson looked at her for a moment and then at Lady Olive. His own clear, deep-set grey eyes lit up with a flash, and his clean-cut lips curved into a smile, as he said:
”I hope I'm not intruding, as a much more distinguished person than myself once said; but, as Hardress is so much better, having apparently found a most potent, though unqualified, physician, I thought you would like to hear the latest news from Europe. The Powers have surrendered at discretion. As they can't fight, they are willing to make peace. They have accepted King Edward as arbitrator, and he, like the good sportsman that he is, has decided that in future, if a country wants to fight another, it shall submit the _casus belli_ to a committee of the Powers not concerned in the quarrel. If they are all concerned in it, the tribunal is to consist of the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archimandrite of the Greek Church.
If either of the belligerents refuse arbitration after the dispute has been thoroughly gone through, or begins fighting before the decision is delivered, it will have the same experiences as Europe had in the late war--which, of course, was no war.”
”Because we stopped it,” said Lady Olive, looking straight across the room into Doctor Lamson's eyes.
”Well, yes, _we_,” said Chrysie, standing up beside the bed. ”I reckon, all things considered, we four have had about as much to do with stopping this war and teaching the nations to behave decently as anybody else on earth. We are here on the throne of the world, kings and queens from pole to pole!”
”But, my dear Chrysie,” exclaimed Lady Olive, flus.h.i.+ng from her shapely chin to her temples, and making a move towards the door, ”surely you don't mean----”
”I don't mean any more than we all mean in our hearts,” interrupted Chrysie, taking Hardress's hand in hers. ”What's the use of world masters and world mistresses trying to hide things from each other? We four people here in this room run the world. I want to run this man, and you want to run that one; and they, of course, think they'll run us, which they won't! Anyhow, we're all willing to try that, and I think the best thing we can do is to sign, seal, and deliver the contract of the offensive and defensive alliance right here and now.
You kiss, and we'll kiss, and that's all there is to it.”
And they kissed.
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