Whoso Findeth a Wife

“Why did you associate with a woman of such doubtful reputation as Sonia Korolénko?” I asked abruptly at last.

“Because I wished to ascertain something,” she replied, in a harsh voice.

“She is scarcely your friend,” I observed.

“She is,” she declared. “I have known her for several years.”

“And you were actually aware of her true character while associating with her!” I exclaimed, rather surprised.

“Of course,” she sighed. “She is an adventuress, I know; nevertheless, she has proved my friend on many occasions.”

“That’s curious,” I remarked.

“Why?”

“Because she made certain allegations against you,” I answered.

“Yes,” she said, without betraying either anger or surprise. “I am fully aware of that. Strange though it may appear, her statements were made with a definite object.”

“Why did she utter such unfounded calumnies?”

“Because I wished to see whether you really loved me,” she answered, drawing herself up and regarding me with sudden calmness. At that moment she assumed the air of the Grand Duchess.

“I did love you,” I declared, “and I took no heed of her assertions. I notice, however,” I added, turning and pointing towards the piano, “I notice that you have placed in a position of conspicuousness the portrait of the man she declared was your lover. Side by side you have placed the pictures of betrayer and betrayed.”

She held her breath, gazing across to the spot I had indicated. Then, in a voice full of emotion, she said, —

“You were foully betrayed, Geoffrey, it is true, but the evil that was done has now been eradicated.”

“In other words, Ogle has paid the death penalty, eh?” I observed, with a grim expression of satisfaction.

“No, no, not that,” she protested seriously. “I mean that the strained relations between your country and mine have now been readjusted, and that a feeling more amicable than before prevails. Even the Earl of Warnham must admit the plain truth that no Power joins another in war unless it sees its own interest in so doing. Russia now, as before the effusion of hearts here in Paris, will attend to her own business, and will not send her Black Sea and Baltic Fleets flying out unless her interests bring her into collision with your British Government – and then it may happen it will not be the interest of France to fight. In the latter days of Louis Philippe there was talk of a Franco-Russian alliance, and there were people who knew – they did not think they knew on the best authority – that the two would be one next spring. Yet Louis Philippe went over to your England an exile by the useful name of Smith, and before long France and England were allied in war against my country. No, good counsel has prevailed, and by the very revelation of the secret alliance contracted between England and Germany, European peace has been secured.”

“You talk like a diplomatist,” I observed reflectively.

She shrugged her shoulders, and with a forced laugh said, —

“It is but natural that I should take an interest in the affairs of nations, I suppose.”

“Let us put them aside,” I said. “We are not rival diplomatists, but husband and wife; we – ”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, interrupting. “I am happy because you are here with me; you, whose presence I have been fearing for so long. See! I smile and am happy;” and she gave vent to a hollow, discordant laugh.

“Happy because you have so successfully mystified me,” I sighed.

“No. Happy because I love you, Geoffrey,” she exclaimed, again throwing her arms affectionately about my neck, and raising her full red lips to mine. “Forgive me; do say you will forgive me,” she implored.

“How can I ever forget the ingenuity and deep cunning with which you deceived me,” I said. “I cannot but recollect how, on that night at Chesham House, Grodekoff congratulated you upon your marriage, yet how careful he was not to disclose to me your identity. Again, even my friend Verblioudovitch must have known who you really were. Why did he not tell me?”

“Because the staff of the Embassy had already received strict orders from St Petersburg not to acknowledge me,” she exclaimed, with a smile. “Lord Warnham fancied he recognised me, and spoke to the Ambassador; but the latter succeeded in assuring him that before marriage I was Ella Laing, and that the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna was at that moment with the Tzarina at Tzarskoïe-Selo. He believed it, and afterwards M’sieur Grodekoff assured me that was the first occasion he had been enabled to successfully deceive your lynx-eyed Foreign Minister.”

“You feared that the Earl might recognise you,” I exclaimed, surprised, for I now remembered the effect produced on my chief when his eyes had first fallen upon my wife. “You knew him, then?”

“Ah, no,” she faltered; “well, we were not exactly acquainted,” and she appeared rather confused, I thought, for her cheeks were suffused by the faintest suspicion of a blush.

“Did you expect he would be there?”

“No; you told me distinctly that he was not going, otherwise I should never have accompanied you,” she said frankly.

“Why?”

“Because I did not desire to meet him,” she replied, adding, with a laugh, “As it was, however, he was satisfied, and went away marvelling, no doubt, at the striking resemblance.”

“Yet you told me nothing,” I observed reproachfully.

“No; I was afraid,” she replied, in a serious voice. “With you I lived on from day to day, fearing detection, dreading lest you should discover some facts regarding my past, and by their light believe me to be an adventuress. Yet, at the same time, I worked on to achieve my freedom from a yoke which had become so galling that, now I loved you, I could endure it no longer.”

“And did you not succeed in breaking asunder this mysterious bond?” I inquired, half doubtfully.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head sorrowfully. “By an untoward circumstance, against which I had not provided, I was prevented, and compelled to flee.”

“If you will divulge absolutely nothing regarding the manner in which you became possessed of the stolen convention, or the reason you have masqueraded as my wife, you can at least tell me why you received so many communications regarding clandestine meetings, and explain who was your mysterious correspondent who signed himself ‘X.’”

Her heart beat quickly; she sighed, and lowered her gaze. She strove to preserve a demeanour of calm hauteur as befitted her station, but in vain.

“You have also found those letters,” she remarked, her voice trembling.

“Yes. Tell me the truth and put my mind at ease.”

“I can put your mind entirely at ease by assuring you, as I did after you detected me walking in Kensington Gardens, that I have had no lover besides yourself, Geoffrey,” she cried vehemently. “I have told you already that I worked to secure freedom of action in the future. Those letters were from one who rendered me considerable assistance.”

“What was his name?” I demanded quickly.

“I may not tell you that,” was her answer, uttered in a quiet, firm tone.

“Then, speaking plainly, you refuse, even now, to give me any elucidation whatever of this irritating mystery, or to allow me to obtain any corroboration of your remarkable story,” I said, with a sudden coldness.

She noticed my change of manner, and clung to me with uplifted face, pale and agitated. Her attempt to treat me as other than her husband had utterly failed.

“Ah! do not speak so cruelly,” she exclaimed, panting. “I – I really cannot bear it, Geoffrey – indeed I can’t. You must have seen that I loved you. I was, when I married, prepared to sacrifice all for your sake; nay, I did sacrifice everything until – until I was forced from you, and thrust back here to this place, that to me is little else than a gilded prison. Ah?” she cried, sobbing bitterly, and gazing around her in despair, “you cannot know how deeply I have sorrowed, how poignant has been the grief in the secret and inmost recesses of my heart; or how, through these months, while I have been travelling, I have longed to see you once again, and hear your voice telling me of your love. But, alas! without knowledge of the strange secret that seals my lips, you can know nothing – nothing!”

“I only know that I still adore you,” I said, with heartfelt fervency.

“Ah! I knew you did,” she exclaimed, raising her eager lips to mine in ecstasy. “I knew you would pity me when you came, yet I feared – I feared because I had lied to you, and deceived you so completely.” Then she kissed my lips, but I did not return her hot, passionate caress, although I confess it made my head reel.

“You have not forgiven,” she exclaimed, in a voice quivering with emotion, as she drew back. “You have not yet promised that you will still regard me as your wife.”

I hesitated. The startling fact of her true station, and the revelation of how ingeniously I had been tricked, caused me a slight revulsion of feeling. Somehow, as Grand Duchess she seemed an entirely different being to the plain, unassuming woman I had known as Ella. From the crown of her well-dressed hair to the point of her tiny, white kid shoe with its pearl embroidery, she was a patrician; the magnificence of her dress and jewels dazzled me, yet in her declarations of devotion her voice seemed to be marred by some indefinable but spurious ring.

Even now she was deceiving me. She would allow no word of her mysterious secret to pass her lips. It had always been the same. She would tell me absolutely nothing, vaguely asserting that to utter the truth would be to invoke an avenging power that she dreaded. I remembered how she had seemed terrorised on more than one occasion when I had demanded the truth, yet what I had learned that night increased my suspicions.

“If I forgive and seek no explanation of the past,” I said at last, “we must, I suppose, remain parted.”

“Ah, yes!” she gasped. “But only for a few short weeks. Then we will come together again never to part – never.”

“I can forgive on one condition only,” I said – “that you tell me the truth regarding the dastardly theft from me on the day of Dudley’s death.”

For an instant she was silent. Then, burying her face on my shoulder, sobbing, she answered in a tone so low as to be almost inaudible, —

“I cannot!”

Gently but firmly I put her from me, although she clung about my neck, urging me to pity her.

“I cannot pity you if you refuse to repose confidence in me,” I answered.

“I do not refuse,” she cried. “It is because my secret is of such a nature that, if divulged, it would wreck both your own happiness and mine.”

“Then to argue further is absolutely useless,” I answered coldly. “We must part.”

“You intend to leave me without forgiveness,” she wailed. “Ah, you will not be so cruel, Geoffrey. Surely you can see how passionately I love you.”

“You do not, however, love me sufficiently well to risk all consequences of divulging your mysterious secret,” I retorted, with almost brutal indifference, turning slowly from her.

“Then kiss me, Geoffrey,” she cried wildly, springing towards me and again entwining her soft arms about my neck. “Kiss me once again – if for the last time.”

Our lips met for an instant, then slowly I disengaged myself and strode towards the door. In her refusal to throw light upon the incidents that had so long held me perplexed and bewildered, I fancied she was shielding someone. Although crushed and downcast, I had resolved to go forth into the world again with my terrible burden of sorrow concealed beneath a smiling countenance. I regretted deeply that I had sought her, now that I was aware of the gulf that lay between us.

“Stay, Geoffrey! Stay. I cannot bear that you should go,” she wailed.

Halting, I turned towards her, saying, —

“When I have learnt the truth, then only will I return. Till then, I can have no faith in you.”

“But you are my husband, Geoffrey. I love you.”

She tottered forward unevenly, as if to follow me, but ere I could save her she staggered and fell forward upon the carpet in a dead faint.

I rang the bell violently, then, with a final glance at the blanched features of the woman I so dearly loved, I passed out, struggling through the brilliant, laughing throng of guests in the great hall, and was soon alone in utter dejection beneath the trees in the long, gas-lit avenue.

Chapter Thirty

Honour among Thieves

In brilliant sunshine, with the larks singing merrily in the cloudless vault of blue, and the air heavy with the scent of hay, I drove from Horsham station along the old turnpike road to Warnham Hall. A carriage had been sent for me, as usual, and as I sat back moodily, I fear I saw little of interest in the typical English landscape. The joys of the world were dead to me, consumed as I was by the one great sorrow of my life. My mind was full of the tristful past. I had reached London from Paris on the previous night, and in response to a telegram from the Earl, saying he had left Osborne and gone to the Hall, I had travelled down by the morning train.

As we entered the park and drove up the broad, well-kept drive, the startled deer bounded away, and the emus raised their small heads with resentful, inquiring glance, but dashing along, the pair of spanking bays quickly brought me up to the great grey portico. As soon as I alighted I handed over my traps to one of the servants and walked straight to the great oak-panelled dining-room.

As I paused at the door, it suddenly opened, and a man emerged so quickly that he almost stumbled over me. Our eyes met. I stood aghast, staring as if I had seen an apparition. In the semi-darkness of the corridor I doubt whether my face was quite distinguishable, but upon his there shone the slanting rays of light from an old diamond-paned window. In a instant I recognised the features, although I had only seen them once before.

It was the foppish young man who had been Ella’s companion on that lonely walk in Kensington Gardens.

Why he had visited the Earl was an inscrutable mystery. He regarded me in surprise for a single instant, then, thrusting both hands negligently into his trousers pockets, strode leisurely away along the corridor, a straw hat with black and white band placed jauntily at the back of his head. I watched him until he had turned the corner and disappeared, then I entered the great old-fashioned apartment.

“Well, Deedes!” exclaimed the Earl, in a voice that was unusually cheerful. He was standing at the window gazing across the park, but my presence caused him to turn sharply. “Back again, then?”

“Yes. I think I have fulfilled the mission,” I managed to exclaim. Truth to tell, this extraordinary encounter had caused me considerable perplexity and annoyance.

“You have done excellently,” he said. “A telegram this morning from Lord Worthorpe shows with what tact you put matters to him, and I am glad to tell you that his interview with the President proved entirely satisfactory. I wired the news to Her Majesty only half-an-hour ago.”

“I did my best,” I observed, perhaps a trifle carelessly, for there was another matter upon which I was anxious to consult my eccentric benefactor.

“The task was one of unusual difficulty, I admit, Deedes, and you have shown yourself fully qualified for a post abroad. You shall have one before long.”

At other times I should have warmly welcomed the enthusiasm of this speech, and thanked him heartily for the promise of a more lucrative position, but now, crushed and hopeless, I felt that joy had left my soul for ever, and merely replied, —

“I am quite satisfied to be as I am. I do not care for the Continent.”

“Why?” he inquired, surprised. “If you remain in the Service here you will have but little chance of distinguishing yourself, whereas in Rome, Constantinople or Berlin, you might obtain chances of promotion.”

“I have been already in St Petersburg, you remember,” I said.

“Ah, of course. But you didn’t get on very well there,” he said. “It is a difficult staff for younger men to work amongst. You’d be more comfortable in Vienna, perhaps. Viennese society would suit you, wouldn’t it?”

“No,” I replied, very gravely. “I fear that henceforward I shall be, like yourself, a hater of society and all its ways.”

“Oh?” he exclaimed, placing his hands beneath his coat-tails, a habit of his when about to enter any earnest consultation. “Why?”

“Well, if you desire to know the truth,” I said, “it concerns my marriage.”

“Ah, of course!” he observed, with deep sorrow. “I had quite forgotten that unfortunate affair. Yet time will cause you to forget. You are young, remember, Deedes – very young, compared with an old stager like myself.”

“It is scarcely likely that I shall forget so easily,” I said, after a slight pause. “Since I have been in Paris I have made a discovery that has bewildered me. I confide in you because you are the only person who knows the secret of my wife’s flight.”

“Quite right,” he said, regarding me with those piercing eyes shaded by their grey shaggy, brows. “If I can assist you or give you advice I am always pleased, for the romance of your marriage is the strangest I have ever known.”

“Yes,” I acquiesced, “and the truth I have accidentally learnt still stranger. I have discovered that my wife was never Ella Laing, as I had believed, but that she really is the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Nicolayevna of Russia.”

“The Grand Duchess!” he cried, amazed, his eyes aflame in an instant. “Are you certain of this; have you absolute proof?”

“Absolute. I have seen her, and she has admitted it, and told me that she masqueraded in England as Ella Laing because she desired to avoid Court etiquette for a time,” I said.

“Grodekoff lied,” he growled in an ebullition of anger. “I recognised her at the Embassy ball when you pointed her out, yet the Ambassador assured me that Her Highness was at that moment in Russia. We have both been tricked, Deedes. But he who laughs last laughs longest.”

He had folded his arms and was standing resolutely before me, gazing upon the dead green carpet deep in thought.

“The mystery becomes daily more puzzling,” he said at length, seating himself. “Tell me all that transpired between you.”

I sank into a chair opposite the renowned chief of the Foreign Office and repeated the conversation that had taken place at our interview, while he listened attentively without hazarding a single remark.

“Then again she would tell you nothing,” exclaimed the Earl, when I had concluded. “She refused absolutely to divulge her secret.”

“Yes,” I said. “I promised to forgive if she would only tell me the truth. She refused; so we have parted.”

“And what do you intend doing?”

“I intend to seek the truth for myself,” I answered with fierce resolve.

“How?”

“I have not yet decided,” I said. “The reason she took such infinite pains to conceal her identity is incomprehensible, but her firm resolution to preserve her secret at all hazards appears as though she is in deadly fear of exposure by some person or other who can only be conciliated by absolute silence.”

“Then we must discover who that person is.”

I nodded, answering: – “I intend to do so.”

Presently, after he had crossed and recrossed the room several times with hands behind his back, murmuring to himself in apparent discontent, but in tones that were undistinguishable, I turned to him saying, —

“As I entered, a visitor left you. Who is he?”

“Cecil Bingham. He is staying with me for a few days.”

“A friend?”

“Well – yes,” answered his Lordship, halting, and regarding me with no little surprise. “What do you know of him?”

At first I hesitated, but on reflection resolved to explain the circumstances in which we had met, and slowly related to him how I had encountered him with my wife in Kensington Gardens on that well-remembered wintry afternoon.

The Earl grew grave, and after observing that Bingham had arrived on the previous day to spend a week, he for some moments stood looking aimlessly out of the window upon the broad park and the great sheet of water glistening in the sunlight beyond. Then, muttering something I could not catch, he walked quickly back to the fireplace, and touched the electric bell.

“Ask Mr Bingham to see me for a moment,” he exclaimed, when the man answered the summons, and in a few minutes the Earl’s guest came in with that affected jaunty air that had caused me to class him as a cad.

When he had entered, the Earl himself walked to the door and softly closed it, then, turning, said in a hard, dry voice, —

“This, Cecil, is my secretary, Deedes, the husband of the woman known as Ella Laing, with whom you have, I understand, been in correspondence, and have met clandestinely on many occasions.”

“What do you mean?” he cried, resentfully, glancing from the Earl to myself. “I know no one of that name. You are mistaken.”

“There is no mistake,” answered the great statesman, coldly, at the same time taking from an old oak bureau a large linen-lined envelope of the kind used in our Department. From a drawer he took one of his visitor’s letters, while from the envelope he drew forth a second letter. At a glance I saw that the latter was one of those mysterious missives signed “X” that had been received by my wife. Opening both, he placed them together and handed them to me without comment.

They were in the same handwriting.

“Do you deny having written that letter?” asked the Minister, sternly, at the same time showing him the note. He made a motion to take it, but suddenly drew away his hand. His lips contracted, his face grew pale, and with a gesture of feigned contempt he waved the Earl’s hand aside.

“Do you deny it?” repeated my chief.

He was still silent – his face a sufficient index to the agitation within him.

“You have endeavoured to deceive me,” continued the Earl, harshly. “You have some fixed purpose in accepting my invitation, and coming here to visit me, but you were unaware that already I had knowledge of facts you have endeavoured so cunningly to conceal. It is useless to deny that you are acquainted with Deedes’s wife, for he recognises you as having walked with her in Kensington Gardens, while I have ascertained at last who she really is – that her name was never Ella Laing.”

He started at this announcement. His lips moved, but no word escaped him.

That the Earl should have learned the true name and station of my wife apparently disconcerted him. His complexion was of ashen hue; all his arrogance had left him, for he saw himself cornered. I stood glaring at him fiercely, for was not I face to face with the man whom my wife had met times without number, concealing from me all motive or duration of her absences? Some secret had existed between them – he was the man whom she apparently feared, and whose will she had obeyed. I felt that now, at last, I should ascertain the truth, and obtain a key to the strange perplexing enigma that had held me in doubt and suspicion through so many weary months.

His shifty gaze met mine; I detected a fierce glint in his eyes.

“Well?” exclaimed his Lordship, as determined as myself upon seeking a solution of the problem. “Now that you admit these mysterious meetings with Her Highness, perhaps you will explain their object.”

“I admit nothing,” he answered in anger, knitting his brows. “Neither have I anything to explain.”

“See!” the Earl said, drawing Ella’s photograph from the envelope. “Perhaps you will recognise this picture?” and his bony hand trembled with suppressed excitement as he placed it before him.

At sight of it my wife’s strange friend drew a long breath. He was white to the lips. Never before had I witnessed such a complete change in any man in so short a period, and especially curious, it seemed, when I reflected that he had been charged with no very serious crime.

“You may allege whatever it may please you,” he said at last, with affected sarcasm. “But a woman’s honour is safe in my hands.”

“My wife’s honour!” I cried, with fierce indignation, walking towards him threateningly. I could no longer stand by in silence when I recollected what Ella had said about being compelled to act according to the will of another. She had, no doubt, been under the thrall of this overdressed dandy. “Now that we have met,” I exclaimed, “you shall explain to me, her husband.”

With a quick movement he strode forward as if to escape us, but in an instant I had gripped him by the shoulder with fierce determination, whole the Earl himself, apprehending his intention, placed his back against the door.