The Lighted Match Part 35

Delgado nerved himself and began.

How he said it or what he said, he did not himself know when the words had been spoken. He rushed through the speech he had prepared like a frightened child at recitation and waited for the outburst of her anger.

He waited in vain.

Marie Astaride had plotted, had consented to every infamy which had been suggested as necessary to bring the man she loved to the Crown.

Now she was silent.

The man looked up when he had waited a seeming century for the expected torrent of reproach.

She was standing supporting herself upon her downward stretched arms, her hands resting on the table. Her face was pallid and her magnificent figure rigid. The scarlet fullness of her lips had gone bloodless. Her eyes were stupefied.

At length she straightened herself, let go her support upon the table and went slowly like a sleep-walker from the room. She had not spoken.

She had not said good-by, but Louis Delgado knew that she had walked out of his life.

That evening Monsieur Jusseret of the French _Cabinet Noir_ met, as if by chance, young Lieutenant Lapas, who was now high in the favor of the new government. Jusseret knew that the lure which had drawn young Lapas away from the confidence of Karyl to the uncertain standard of Delgado had been the influence of the Countess Astaride. He knew that Lapas loved her hopelessly, willing even in her name to serve the greater man who loved her more successfully. His attachment was that of the boy for the woman who is mistress of all the mature arts of charm. This love could be turned into the fanatic's zeal; this boy could be led to the extreme of martyrdom, if the strings of his characterless nature were played upon with a skill sufficiently consummate. Jusseret knew also a number of other things. He knew that whereas he had, to all seeming, brought a difficult task to completion, he was in reality not yet half through. His own vision went farther into the future, and recognized in the present only a mile-post far from the ultimate.

He led Lapas to his own rooms. He was leaving for Paris the following morning, he explained, and wished a brief conference.

Jusseret could, when occasion demanded, be not only calm and self-sufficient, but also emotional. Now he was emotional.

"Rarely, indeed," he began, "do I permit personal indignation to excite me. But this is so unspeakable that I wished to talk to you. You enjoy the confidence of the Countess Astaride?"

"Only in a humble way," confessed young Lapas.

"But you are her friend? If she were wronged and had no other defender, you would a.s.sume her cause?"

"With my life," protested the officer, fervently.

"This matter," said Jusseret dubiously, "might cost you your life.

Possibly I should not tell you. As a politician I can have nothing to do with it, but as a man, I wish I were myself free to act."

"Who has offended the Countess?" demanded Lapas hotly.

"Offended, my young friend! This is not an offense. It is the gravest indignity that can be shown a woman. It is an insult to which a man must either blind himself--or punish with such means as can ignore personal peril."

"For G.o.d's sake," insisted the other, "explain yourself."

"Louis Delgado," began Jusseret quietly, "accepted this woman's love: enjoyed it to the full. He sat and dreamed over his absinthe futile dreams of power. He was too weak to strike a blow--too weak to raise a hand. Then she took up his cause; intrigued, enlisted our interests, raised his supine and powerless ambitions to a throne. There he abandons her at the foot of the stairs by which he mounted; and refuses her his Crown. He talks now of a more Royal alliance." Jusseret spread his hands in a gesture of disgust.

Lapas rose tensely from his chair. The veins on his temples stood out corded and deep-lined.

"This cannot be true, sir," he argued. "There must be some error. You wrong the King."

"Am I the man to wrong Louis?" questioned the Frenchman. "You have only to wait and see for yourself. The matter rests with you. She and I have put Louis on the throne. So much I did as the servant of my government.

What I say to you I say as a man, and I had rather behold all my work undone than to stand by and see it bear such fruit. Adieu."

He rose slowly and took his departure. Outside, he smiled.

"I fancy," he told himself, "he will go to the Countess. I fancy she will corroborate me--and then--!" He dismissed the matter with his habitual shrug.

Two weeks had pa.s.sed since the tragedy in Stamboul, and the _Isis_ cruised aimlessly westward. The Mediterranean stretched to the horizon, so placid that the froth from the wake washed languidly, almost lifelessly, on the surface, and a single cloud hung stationary in the softer blue of the sky. Wrapped in a steamer rug, her figure, more slender in the simple lines of her black gown, Cara sat gazing toward the receding coast-line of Malta. So she had spent most of the hours since they had weighed anchor at Constantinople. On the deck at her feet sat Benton.

At Piraeus Von Ritz had secured a copy of the _Figaro_ several days old, and the men had read its report of the Regency of Louis in Puntal. Then the yacht had called at Malta where the gray fortresses of Valetta frown out to sea, and Von Ritz had once more gone in quest of news.

That had been yesterday. By common consent the two men refrained from allusions to State matters in the girl's presence. Now the former adviser of the King uneasily paced the deck. Over his usually sphinx-like face brooded the troubled expression of one who confronts an unwelcome necessity. Suddenly he halted before the girl's deck-chair, and, schooling his voice with an apparent effort, spoke in his old-time even modulation, but for once he found it difficult to meet the eyes of the person he addressed.

"We have heretofore not spoken of things which we would all give many years of life to forget," he began. Then he added with feeling: "Only the sternest necessity could force me to do so now."

As he paused for permission to continue, the girl raised her eyes with a sad smile that had grown habitual.

"I have come," said Von Ritz, "to stand for an implacable Nemesis to you, and yet I should wish to be identified only with happiness in your thoughts. To me one thing always comes first. The House of Galavia is my gospel; has been my gospel since Karyl's father mounted its throne." He paused and added gravely: "Louis Delgado has reaped his reward--he is dead."

Benton's voice broke out in an explosive "Thank G.o.d!"

Von Ritz stood a moment silent, then, dropping to one knee, he took the fingers which fell listlessly over the arm of Cara's steamer-chair and raised them to his lips.

"Your Majesty is Queen of Galavia."

The American came to his feet, his hands clenched, but with quick self-mastery he stood back, breathing heavily.

Cara sat for a moment only half-comprehending, then with a low moan she leaned forward and covered her face with both hands.

"Forgive me," said Von Ritz. "I _am_ your Nemesis."

Benton moved over silently and knelt beside her chair. Neither spoke, but at last she raised her face and sat looking out at the water, then slowly one hand came out gropingly toward the American and both of his own closed over it. Von Ritz stood waiting.

When finally she spoke, her voice was almost childlike, full of pleading.

"I thought," she said, "that all that was over. I had thought that whatever is left of life belonged just to me--for my very own. I thought I could take it away and try to mend it."

Von Ritz turned his head and his eyes traveled northward and westward, where, somewhere beyond the horizon, lay his country.

"Galavia needs you," he said with grave simplicity. "Unless you come to her aid there must be ruin and dismemberment. You will save your country."

But his words appeared to convert all her crushed and pathetic misery into anger. "It is not my country!" she replied almost fiercely. "To me it means only--"

Von Ritz raised his hand supplicatingly. "It is my country," he said sadly, "and--your duty. Its fate is in your hands."

The girl rose, swayed slightly, and putting out one hand for support, stood with her black-gowned figure sketched slenderly against the white of the cabin wall, her eyes irresolute and distressed.

"I must have time to think," she begged. "Will you leave me?" Von Ritz bowed and retired.

She dropped exhaustedly into the chair again and for a long while sat silent. Finally she turned toward the man who, kneeling by her side, waited for her decision through what seemed decades of suspense, and her hands went out gropingly again toward him.