Part 6 (1/2)
Major Hawke shook his head. ”You may rely on me to meet you, and to faithfully obey you,” he gravely said. There were unspoken words trembling on his lips, which he fain would have uttered. ”By Heavens!
She is a witch!” he murmured, in a repressed excitement, as he walked quietly down the hallway to keep his tryst with Casimir Wieniawski. For Berthe Louison had at once divined the cause of his unrest.
”You think that I should tell you more? Why should I tell you anything?
We are strangers yet, not even friends. You may divine that I trust no man. I have had my own sad lessons of life-lessons learned in bitterness and tears. I go out to your burning jungle land, with neither hope to allure, nor fear to repel. The whole world is the same to me. That I have a purpose, I admit; and even you may know me better by and bye!
Till then, no professions, no promises, no pledges. I use you for my own selfish purposes, that is all; and you can frankly study your own self-interest. We are two clay jars swept along down the Ganges of life.
For a few threads of the dark river's current, we travel on, side by side! You have frankly taken me at my word! I have taken you at yours!
There is a written order to settle my affairs and remove my luggage.
Of course, should you meet with any accident, telegraph to the Vittorio Emmanuele, at Brindisi. Money,” she said, almost bitterly, ”would be telegraphed; and so, I say”--he listened breathlessly--”au revoir--at Brindisi!” she concluded, giving him her hand, with a frank smile.
As Alan Hawke descended the stair, he growled. ”A woman without a heart, and--not without a head!” As he calmly answered the manager's polite inquiry for Madame's health, the ”heartless woman” whom he had left was lying sobbing in the dark room above--crying, in her anguish, ”Valerie!
My poor, dead Valerie! I go to your child!”
But, none suspected her departure, when the trimly-clad woman glided out of the entrance of the Hotel Faucon, at eleven o'clock. The maid was in waiting on the circular place in front with a carriage, and the key of the apartment lay in a sealed envelope on Alan Hawke's table, which proves that a few francs are just as potent in Switzerland as the same number of s.h.i.+llings in London, or dollars in New York. It was a clear case of ”stole away.”
When Major Alan Hawke leaned over the supper table at the Casino, pledging Madame Frangipanni's bright eyes in very fair cafe champagne, he nervously started as he heard the wailing whistle and clanging bells of the through train for Constance. He forgot the faded complexion, the worn face, the chemically tinted hair and haggard eyes of the broken-down Austrian blonde concert singer, in the exhilaration of Berthe Louison's departure.
For he had not lost Professor Casimir Wieniawski from sight a moment since the hour of ten, and that ”distinguished n.o.ble refugee” was now in a maudlin way, murmuring perfunctory endearments in the ear of the ex-prima donna, who tenderly gazed upon him in a proprietary manner.
Alan Hawke had judged it well to ply the champagne, and, at the witching hour of midnight, he critically inspected Casimir's condition. ”He is probably about tipsy enough now to tell all he knows, and, with an acquired truthfulness. I will, therefore, bring this festive occasion to a close.” Whereat the watchful Lucullus of the feast artfully drew Madame Frangipanni aside.
”I have to go on to London, Chere Comtesse,” he flatteringly said, ”you must give me Casimir for a couple of hours to-night, to talk over the old times.”
He lingered a moment, hat in hand, as he chivalrously sent Madame Frangipanni home in a carriage. The poor old singer's bosom was thrilled with a sunset glow of departing greatness, as she lingered tearfully that night over the memories of the halcyon days when the officers of Francis Joseph's bodyguard had fought for the honors of the carriage courtesies of the Diva. Eheu fugaces!
Closeted together, the minor guests having been artfully dispersed, Major Alan Hawke and his friend recalled the olden glories of Wieniawski's Indian tour. It was with a jealous hand that Hawke doled out the cognac, until Casimir abruptly said: ”And now, mon ami, tell me what has linked you to Alixe Delavigne?” Alan Hawke had keenly studied his man, and found that the limit of the artist's drinking capacity seemed to be infinity, and so he leaned back and coldly scrutinized the musician's shabby exterior. ”I think that I can risk it now,” he mused, and then, in a crisp, hard voice, he suddenly said: ”I don't mind parting with a twenty-pound note, Casimir, if you will tell me all you know about that beauty. You need it now--more than I. I am to be the judge of the value of your story, however. Mark me, I know the main features, but I also know that you have met her in the old days.” The broken-down artist flushed under the changed relation of guest and paid tool.
He uneasily stammered, as he filled a brandy gla.s.s, ”As a loan--as a loan!” But Hawke was sternly business-like in his reply.
”Don't make any pretenses with me. You are hard down on your luck, and you know it. This is a mere matter of business.” He unfolded a bundle of notes and carelessly tossed two ten-pound notes over to Casimir, who seized them with trembling fingers. The pitiful sum represented to the artist two months of his meager salary. Here was absinthe unlimited, a little roulette, a new frock for Madame Frangipanni, perhaps even a dress coat for himself.
”How old do you think Alixe is?” unsteadily began the artist.
”I should say about twenty-five,” gallantly replied the Major.
”We will premise that she is thirty-three,” confidently began the musician, ”or even thirty-five. When I was a young fool at Warsaw, eighteen years old,” he babbled. ”I was the local prodigy. My first essays in public were, of course, concerts, and I was soon the vogue.
And, later, asked as an artistic guest to the chateaux of the n.o.bility in Poland, Kowno, Vitebsk, Wilna, Minsk, Grodno and Volhynia. I was a poet in thought, a lover of all womankind in my dreams, and a conspirator in the inmost chambers of my defiant Polish nature.”
”They made me the cat's-paw of adroit adventurers who were filling their pockets from wealthy Polish sympathizers in France and America, and some of them were Russian paid spies. I braved all the risks. I was the secret means of communication of the highest circles of our cult of Rebellion. Fool that I was, wandering from province to province, I lived the life of a mad enthusiast. The proud memories of Poland were mine, the spirit of her music, arts, and poetry had cast its witchery over me. Her history, the tragedy of a crownless queen of sorrows, had transported me into a dreamy idealism. I was soon the confidant of our seductive mobile Polish beauties. Sinuous, insincere, changeful, pa.s.sionate, and burning with the flames of Love and Life, I was, at once, their idol and their plaything, their hero, and their willing slave.
”For then, the spirit of old Poland rang out in my numbers, and I waked the quivering echoes of woman's heart at will. It was in seventy-three that I was sent on a special mission to Prince Pierre Troubetskoi's splendid chateau at Jitomir in Volhynia. The crafty Russians were watching us even there, and were busied in a.s.sembling troops secretly, at Kiev and Wilna. To another was given the proud place of secret spy over the higher circles of Wilna, while my duty was to watch Jitomir and Kiev. Troubetskoi was a bold gallant fellow, an ardent Muscovite, and had secretly returned from a long sojourn in Paris. He was in close touch with the Governors of Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia, and we feared his sword within, his Parisian connections without. An evil star brought me into his household as his guest. For nearly a year I was kept vibrating between the points of danger to us, my personal headquarters being at the Chateau of Jitomir. And there I lived out my brief heart-life, for there I met Valerie Troubetskoi. No one seemed to know where Pierre had found her, but later I learned her story from her own lips.
”That is, all of the story of a woman's heart-life which is ever unveiled to any man! She was beautiful beyond--compare, her wistful tenderness s.h.i.+ning out as the moon, softer than the fierce noonday glare of the pa.s.sion-transfigured faces of our Polish beauties. For they loved, for Love's own sake, and Valerie Troubetskoi offered up the chalice of her own heart in silent sadness. I never saw so lovely a being.”
”Did she look like that?” suddenly demanded Hawke, thrusting a photograph before the haggard eyes of the broken artist. He gasped, and tears gathered in his lashes. ”Valerie, herself, and, as I knew her only before her fatal illness had marked her down. Did Alixe give you this?”
He clutched at it with his trembling hands.
”Go on,” harshly said Alan Hawke, ”the hour is late!”