A Modern Mercenary

'I am as I always was,' he parried.

'I wonder if that is true?' She raised her drooping face again. 'I don't know how to believe you. Why will you keep up this pretence of – of reserve between us? You never tell me your troubles, and I suppose you have them, like the rest of us. We should be quite old friends now, and yet you are always so' – she hesitated for a word – 'courteous. Are you ever angry, for example?'

'Very often.'

'But not with me, and I have given you cause many a time. If you would be angry with me even once, Jack, causelessly angry, then I should know I had a friend to whom I could go if I were in trouble – in such trouble as I am to-night!'

'If there is anything I can do for you – '

The quiet tone annoyed her. She rose quickly.

'If – if – if! Any man could help me who – cared.'

'I do care.'

'I wonder,' she said wistfully, 'how much you mean of what you say. I have no standard to judge you by, because you are not quite like other men. But I owe you my life, and I sometimes think it gives me a claim on you.'

'I can never pretend you owe me anything: you were quite safe; no accident could have happened. You are far too good a horsewoman, though you were nervous for the moment.' He spoke with a careless affectionateness, for the young Countess in her helpless beauty appealed to him.

'Look at me!' she said tragically. 'Do I seem hateful?'

'You are a young queen,' he paused, and added, 'a young queen – seen in a dream! You are too ethereal to be of common earth.'

'I am of common earth like any other woman,' she answered with a forlorn little smile; 'I can be afraid and – I can love!'

'Afraid? In your own Castle, among your own people?'

'Yes, Jack. Don't think I am silly! It is quite true. You say you have not changed, that you are still my friend. You are my only one then! I must look to you for protection; I have no one else in the whole world.' She was very near him, her little cold hand had caught his in her vehemence; she looked apprehensively behind her, and then spoke low in his ear. 'I am afraid of my husband. He wishes to be rid of me – I have seen it in his eyes. Sagan will kill me! Do you remember the night of the ball, when I gave you the firefly? Have you kept it, I wonder? I said mine would be a short life. It is true. Sagan is tired of me, and I – Jack, I – loathe him!'

'But – ' Rallywood began.

'You don't believe me? See this!' she pushed back a band of black velvet from her arm, and held it out to him. This touched him more than all; the slender blue-veined wrist with the marks of those cruel fingers clasped about it moved him far more than the temptations of her delicate beauty. With an almost involuntary desire to comfort her as one might comfort and please a child, he bent above her hand and kissed the bruises.

Isolde clung to him with a quick sob of relief.

'Promise me, Jack, that you will save me! When danger threatens me I will send for you. You will come? You promise?'

But Rallywood was not in the least in love with Madame de Sagan for all his pity. He was again master of himself, and an odd suspicion flashed across him.

'I feel certain you are mistaken,' he repeated; 'but you have another friend who can be of more service than I just now, Mademoiselle Selpdorf.'

The Countess sank back into her chair.

'What do you know of Valerie?' she asked coldly.

'Very little, but – '

'Thanks! I know her better than you do. I don't choose that she should amuse herself at my expense.

As it is, she has brought most of this trouble upon me.'

Rallywood may have been sagacious enough on some points, but on this particular one he was a fool. He was not at all aware that Madame de Sagan with her innocent eyes and small brain was sifting him.

'But she meant to defend you!' he exclaimed.

She laughed softly, and if a woman could have compassed the ruin of a man by means of love and temptation, Rallywood was lost from that hour, for the rivalry of Valerie Selpdorf added the one incentive of bitter resolve that drives such slight-brained jealous souls to the last limit of reckless endeavour.

'When I find myself in danger I will remind you of the firefly, and you will come then, Jack!' she said, 'you promise?'

'When you want me, I will come – as soon as I may.'

'But that is only half a promise.'

'Yes,' he replied, 'but you know the other half is pledged already.'

She sprang up with clenched hands.

'What? To Valerie? Already?'

'No, Madame, to the Duke.'

'Ah, the Duke is well served!' she said sadly as he bowed at the door, but she laughed to herself when it closed behind him, 'Yet you will come when I send for you, Jack!'

CHAPTER XV

COLENDORP

As the night deepened the wind again rose, its many voices howled about the Castle and compelled the ear to listen. It volleyed yelling through the ravines, it roared among the lean pine-trees like the surf on an open coast, it swept round the Castle walls in long-drawn infuriated screaming that seemed charged with echoes of wild pain and remoteness and fear. The narrow moon had long since sunk behind the rack of storm-driven clouds, and left the mountains steeped in a tumultuous milk-coloured darkness of snow and wind.

Within the massive walls the reception rooms were closed and empty at last; the guests had separated and night had taken possession, but not rest.

Valerie, alone in her room and oppressed by the vague infection of wakefulness and fear, moved from window to window listening to the wild noises that were abroad, and trying to reason herself out of the conviction of coming danger, which held her from sleep.

She had thrown back the curtains from the windows. Her room occupied an exposed corner of the Castle tower, which stood on the edge of the gorge through which the Kofn chafed its way to the plains below the Ford. A narrow strip of ground scarcely six feet in width alone separated the wall of the tower from the precipice that fell sheer away to the foaming water far below.

She tried to read but could not fix her attention. Her heart seemed in her ears and answered to every sound.

And all the while in the scattered rooms and shadowy passages the drama which involved her life was being slowly played out. Below on the ground floor of the tower Elmur and Sagan sat together.

'By the way, my dear Count, have you ever thought of the possibility of Captain Colendorp's refusal to see things in our light?' Elmur was asking, after an interval filled in by the noises of wind and water which could not be shut out of the Castle on such a night.

The Count looked up and scowled.

'Leave the management of the affair to me,' he said. 'Unless I were sure of my man, I should not be such a fool as to bring him here to listen to what I shall say to him to-night;' then he added as an afterthought, 'When once we have begun, Baron von Elmur, there can be no going back. Remember that! The game must now be played to the end, whatever that end is.'

Elmur pondered. Sagan was a bad tool, at once stubborn and secretive, cunning enough to recognise and to resent handling, thickheaded and vain enough to blunder ruinously. And Elmur found at the last and most important moment that for some unexplained reason he had lost the whip-hand of Count Simon.

Up to this interview, by alternate effrontery and flattery, he had kept his place in the Count's confidence, and exerted a guiding and restraining influence over him. Now Sagan held him at arm's length, and was plainly determined to act according to his own judgment without consulting the German. The mischief had, of course, been done by the news of Elmur's engagement to Selpdorf's daughter, for Sagan, like others of his limited mental development, was sensitively suspicious. Hence the bond between the two men was weak, inasmuch as neither liked nor trusted the other, but it was strong, since both were tenacious and both had staked all the future on the chance of forcing a new régime upon Maäsau the Free. At this crisis, however, Elmur would gladly have hedged or masked his position, for he knew himself to be overmuch at the mercy of the equivocal tact and discretion of his ungovernable coadjutor.

'I cannot help thinking that my presence at the outset will make Captain Colendorp shy at any proposition whatever,' said Elmur again.

'Do you want to draw back? You don't wish to appear in the matter – is that it? By St. Anthony, von Elmur, you showed me the road that has brought me to this pass and you will have to stand by me now! Also you are wrong about Colendorp. When he sees for himself that I have Germany behind me, it will decide his doubts – if he has any, which I don't expect. I have read the man. He is soured and ill-conditioned, the readiest stuff to make a rebel and a traitor of!'

What more Elmur might have urged was cut short by the entrance of Colendorp. He had left his sword outside.

He saluted Sagan in his stiff punctilious way, his dark and sallow face impenetrable.

'I am glad to see you, Captain Colendorp,' said Sagan with some constraint. Even he felt the check of the man's iron impassiveness.

'You sent for me, my lord,' returned Colendorp, as one who hints that time is short and he would be through with business.

'Take a cigar,' said the Count, pushing a box across the table, and also pouring out a generous glass of the liqueur, for the manufacture of which Maäsau is famous – the golden glittering poison known as bizutte.

Colendorp accepted both in silence, but took a seat with a certain slow unwillingness that was suggestive. Colendorp was at the best unpliable. His manner put an edge on Sagan's temper. He plunged into his subject.

'Yes, I sent for you, Captain Colendorp, because I believe you to be a faithful Maäsaun. You are not one of those blind optimists who say because Maäsau has been swinging so long between ruin and extravagance that she must swing on so for ever. It is not possible!'

'I am sorry to hear that, my lord.'

'No, I say it is not possible. Changes must be made. In these days of big armaments and growing kingdoms, Maäsau can no longer stand alone. She must secure an ally, a friend powerful enough to back her up against all comers – a great nation who will make the cause of Maäsau's freedom her own, and help us to preserve the traditions of our country.'

Elmur half expected the soldier to point this speech for himself by a glance towards the representative of Germany, but Colendorp sat unresponsive and black-browed, and gave no sign.

'There is a party among us who advise us to wait until we are forced into a corner, and then to make choice of such an ally. But reasonable men know that a bargain one is driven to make must inevitably be a bad bargain. The only hope for Maäsau is to move at once and to move boldly before it is too late, and while we are still in a position to choose for ourselves under the conditions which suit us best and will best conduce to the preservation of our freedom.'

Colendorp listened without any change of expression.

'What is your opinion, Captain Colendorp?' asked Sagan at last.

'The only difficulty would be to find a nation sufficiently disinterested for our purpose, my lord,' replied Colendorp deliberately.

'I have found one.' Sagan indicated Elmur, but the Guardsman still kept his gaze on the Count. 'Only one small obstacle stands in the way of carrying out our plans – the plans, recollect, of the wisest and most patriotic of our countrymen. I need not name it.'

Colendorp apparently thought for a moment.

'M. Selpdorf?' he said.

'But not at all! Selpdorf is one of the foremost of my advisers.'

Colendorp shook his head as if no other name occurred to him; Sagan bent across the table, the knotted hand on which he leaned twitching slightly.

'You do not speak, but you know the truth. And you know the – the Duke.'

Colendorp's silence was telling on Sagan's self-control.

'Yes, the Duke!' he reiterated. 'He has never given a thought to the welfare of Maäsau. Its revenues are his necessity, that is all! If the ruler will not take the interests of the country into consideration, his people must supply his place. Do not misunderstand my words!' for at length a blacker frown passed over the iron face of the listener. 'My meaning is not to hurt the Duke at all; our one wish is to urge upon him the only course left for the safety of the country. To that end we must all combine. So long as his Highness believes he can depend on his Guard to back him, he will hold out against even the most reasonable demands. Therefore the Guard must be with us.'

'I am not the colonel of the Guard,' said Colendorp quietly. Sagan took this in some form as an agreement with his views, some surrender on the part of the Guardsman, and he broke out into a flood of speech.

'No, but Wallenloup! A pig-headed old fool, who would never be brought to see an inch either side of his oath of allegiance, but would rush blindly on before the Duke to his death, and to the destruction of Maäsau – to anywhere! Colendorp, Ulm being away, you are the senior officer, failing Wallenloup. It is not outside the possibilities of the game that you would find yourself in command of the Guard when all was said and done. The highest ambition of a Maäsaun is yours if you will promise us your help in this struggle! A struggle, mind you, not of selfish motives nor for self-aggrandisement, but for Maäsau the Free!' He stuttered in his eagerness and then stood waiting for the reply.

'And if the Duke does not consent to – any – changes?' asked Colendorp coldly.

At this juncture Elmur interposed.

'The Count will ex – '

But Sagan was rushing his fences now like a vicious horse. Having once given voice to his ambitions he had no longer the power to rein in his speech.

'By your leave, Baron von Elmur, I will speak! Colendorp, you are a man to whom the world may yet give much. Your one chance is being offered to you – here – to-night. The men will follow you if you give the word, and Wallenloup, well, Wallenloup must upon that occasion absent himself. Use your influence with the other officers. They are not to be bribed, of course, but in the cause of the country each man would find his services well rewarded. Think before you answer me, man! Duke Gustave is sunk in pleasure and has sold the country over and over again to the highest bidder, and only got out of his share of the bargain by Selpdorf's infernal cleverness. This time we will play an open game. With Germany to stand by us, we have nothing to fear!'

'And if His Highness will not consent to these changes?' again demanded Colendorp.

'Then' – Elmur laid a hand on the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off – 'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go – to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.'

Colendorp's dark eyes glared straight in front of him. Had it been Adiron – Adiron, as true a man, would have feigned agreement and blown the plot afterwards. But never Colendorp! He was narrow-minded, poor, embittered, scenting insult in every careless word, proud, loyal, desperate. Mentally his vision was limited; he could see but one thing at a time, but he saw it very large.

Sagan's treachery passed by him in that moment of mad feeling. He felt and felt only the deadly affront offered to him of all the officers of the Guard – the coarse bribe of the colonelcy dangled before his starving nose, for he alone of all the Guard had been deemed corruptible! The thought held more than the bitterness of death.

He looked from wall to wall, and knew himself an unarmed man, so he made ready to die as a soldier and a gentleman. But first he must clear his tarnished honour – tarnished with the foul proposal made to him by Count Simon of Sagan. He had passed through life a cold and, in his own sense of the word, an honourable man, disliked, feared and avoided outside his own most intimate circle. He had been driven by the irresistible destiny of character to live a lonely man, and now the strength of a lonely man was his – the strength that can make an unknown death a glory for the sake of honour, not honours. So he spoke.

'You were very good, Count Sagan, to make choice of me before all the Guard for – this!' he said in his cold voice; 'may I ask why you so favoured me?'

'Because I can read a man.'

'And you read me so? Then hear me. I take the place you have given me. I take my place as the least staunch of all the Guard. You have told me so much, unmasked so clearly what you intend to do, that, unless I fall in with your wishes, I can never hope to leave this room except feet foremost. I say this. Now see me act as the least staunch of the Guard!'

Without warning he leaped upon Sagan, hurling him backwards with the force of the sudden impact, and buried his fingers in the grey bristling beard. He had but his bare hands with which to slay the enemy of the Duke, and used them with the strength of envenomed pride. Sagan, under the iron throttling fingers snatched at his hunting-knife and stabbed fiercely upwards between the bent arms at the Guardsman's throat.

Inside the room the heavy breathing and struggling of the men on the floor seemed to Elmur loud enough to alarm the whole Castle, in spite of the furious screaming of the gale. He sprang to the writhing heap and tried to pinion Colendorp, but as he touched him the wounded man fell back. In a moment Sagan was on his feet calling on Elmur to bring the lamp. He seized Colendorp under the arm and shoved him roughly towards the wall, where throwing back a curtain he opened a door and thrust the tottering figure before him down a short flight of steps. Then another door was opened and the tsa swept in with a wild yell, for a moment holding upright the failing man who staggered out on to the snowy terrace, making a tragic centre to the flickering path of light cast by the lamp in Elmur's hand.

For an instant Colendorp stood swaying on the yielding snow by the edge of the precipice, and as he swayed his voice climbed through his broken throat —

'Maäsau the Free! Long live the Duke! The Duke's man … I … Colendorp of …'

The wind had lulled for a second. Again the mad blast caught and wrenched Colendorp's figure, the snow gave between his feet, and he plunged forward heavily into the gorge of the Kofn river. The broken snow, whirled up in a great cloud by the eddying gusts, shone in the lamplight for a second like a wild toss of spray, then settled again upon the narrow terrace, obliterating all marks there. A window overhead was pushed open, but already the band of light upon the snow was gone, and nothing remained for Valerie's eyes but a chaos of gloom. Yet she had seen something. Dimly through the double glass she had discerned the green and gold of the Guard on the swaying figure before it dropped away for ever into the night.

CHAPTER XVI

'WITH YOUR LIPS TO THE HURT.'

A few minutes later a knocking came to Madame de Sagan's door. It was low and urgent. She ran to open it, her heart in her throat. A hand pushed her aside with the rough careless force of full control. She recoiled with an exclamation, for a glance showed her that the Count was in one of his most deadly moods.

'What have you done – where is Selpdorf's daughter?' he snarled.

As Madame de Sagan shrank from the menacing hand the door opened a second time, and Valerie herself stumbled in with a bloodless face.

At the sight of the Count, she drew herself together like one who faces an unexpected peril.

'I apologise for coming, but I am frightened. The storm is dreadful. So I came to you, Isolde.'

Isolde put out her arms with a sobbing cry.

'I am frightened, too,' she said with a swift resentful glance at her husband; 'I was coming for you. Stay with me, Valerie; I will not be left alone!'

Sagan looked from one to the other of the two beautiful faces, and a sensation of surprised dismay, to which he was a stranger, arose in his mind. Hitherto women had been to him possessions, not problems. Now a very ancient truth burst in upon him with all the force of a revelation. To own a woman is not always to understand her. The unexpected defiance on his wife's face confounded him.

'Isolde!' he began, stepping towards her.

But the young Countess clung to Valerie.

'Stay with me, Valerie!' she implored. 'I am far more frightened than you, for I know what there is to fear.'

With a loud curse of bewilderment he strode out, banging the door behind him. Isolde sprang to it, slipping the bolts with trembling fingers. Then she threw herself upon a couch and broke into pitiful sobbing.

Valerie stood looking down at her in an agony of suspense, yet remembering that self-control is the chief rule of every game. Presently she put her hand on Isolde's shoulder. The young Countess started up with a suppressed scream. 'I had forgotten you were there. Valerie, he will murder me! He hates me! Oh, I have no one to save me!'

Valerie looked round. After the scene she had just witnessed, this suggestion did not sound so wild as it would have done at another time.

'You are nervous, Isolde; one could fancy anything on such a night,' she said soothingly.

'Have you lived so long in Maäsau without knowing that here at Sagan everything is possible? He threatens me, and oh, my God, what shall I do?'

Valerie sat down beside her and put a steady hand upon her arm. She had her own object in this visit, but it must be approached with caution.

'I am here. I will help you!' she said reassuringly.

Isolde sat up and put her arm round her companion's shoulders.

'I must trust you – though – Valerie, there is one person who might be able to help me to-night,' she whispered close to the girl's ear. 'He might save me. But he must come to me – here – now! I dare not leave this room. Simon – ' she shivered.

'Who is it?' A new coldness crept into Valerie's voice as she listened.

'Can you not guess? It is Captain Rallywood.'

Valerie had braced herself to meet this, and it only added proof to her own fears for his safety. Come what might, she would undertake any message from Isolde to get the opportunity of warning the Duke's guard of the coming danger, and to tell the fate of that gallant figure tossing to and fro in the battering rush of the Kofn. She drew herself away from Isolde's embrace with a shudder.

'What is the matter with you?' Isolde peered up at her with a quick scrutiny. 'You are shaking all over. Valerie, is it because of him?'

'I am very cold,' returned the girl with a smile. 'I am quite willing to bring – Captain Rallywood. But where is he?'

'He is on guard in the Duke's ante-room.' She turned her head away.

'Then, Isolde, you know it is impossible! He cannot come!'

'Even if it costs my life?' said the Countess bitterly. 'Oh, how cheap you hold other people's lives, Valerie! You are a true Maäsaun!'

Valerie thought a moment. The request of Madame de Sagan fell in with her own plan. It would enable her to solve the doubt that was agonising her; yet if she found him safe, how could she lend herself to tempt him to his own dishonour? A cruel question rose within her. Should she put him to the supreme test of life and love – would she not rather know him dead in the cold river, than living and false to her dim ideal of him?

'There is no time to spare.' Isolde's voice broke in upon her. 'If you could make him know the danger I stand in, he must come! Remind him of his promise to me.'

'But if he will not come?' Valerie forced the words.

'Then ask him to give you the cigarette case of Maäsaun leather-work. That will remind him of many things. But he will come,' she ended more confidently.

Valerie rose.

'I am ready. I know the passages are watched. I saw no one, yet I felt the shadows were full of eyes. Lend me your sable cloak, Isolde; everyone will recognize that, and with this lace about my head, I shall be free to go where I please as the Countess Sagan.'

'Valerie' – Madame de Sagan held the girl back – 'listen to me, you must make him come! I must tell you all. Rallywood is in danger, nothing can save him unless you separate him from the Duke – ' she stopped, panting, then bared her arm. 'Remind him how he promised me – with his lips upon the hurt! Now go!'