Her Majesty's Minister

She bowed stiffly, and her wrinkled face, which bore visible traces of poudre orchidée and touches of the hare’s-foot, puckered up into a simpering smile.

“Well, and what else?” she asked. “These speeches you have apparently prepared for some pretty woman you expected to meet here to-night, but, since she has not kept the appointment, you are practising them upon me.”

“No,” I said, “I really protest against that, Baronne. A woman is never too old for a man to pay her compliments.”

We had strolled into a cool ante-room, and were sitting together upon one of the many seats placed beneath clumps of palms and flowers, the only light being from a hundred tiny electric lamps hung overhead in the trees. The perfect arrangement of those ante-rooms of the Salle des Fêtes on the nights of the official receptions is always noteworthy, and after the heat, music, and babel of tongues in the grand salon it was cool, quiet, and refreshing there.

By holding her regular salon, where everybody who was anybody made it a point to be seen, the Baronne had acquired in Paris a unique position. Her fine house in the Avenue des Champs Elysées was the centre of a smart and fashionable set, and she herself made a point of being versed in all the latest gossip and scandal of the French capital. She scandalised nobody, nor did she seek to throw mud at her enemies. She merely repeated what was whispered to her; hence a chat with her was always interesting to one who, like myself, was paid to keep his ears open and report from time to time the direction of the political wind.

Tournier, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and his wife were her most intimate friends; hence she was frequently aware of facts which were of considerable importance to us. Indeed, once or twice her friendliness for myself had caused her to drop hints which had been of the greatest use to Lord Barmouth in the conduct of his difficult diplomacy at that time when the boulevard journals were screaming against England and the filthy prints were caricaturing Her Majesty, with intent to insult. Even the Figaro– the moderate organ of the French Foreign Office – had lost its self-control in the storm of abuse following the Fashoda incident, and had libelled and maligned “les English.” I therefore seized the opportunity for a chat with the wizen-faced old lady, who seemed in a particularly good-humour, and deftly turned the conversation into the political channel.

“Now, tell me, Baronne,” I said, after we had been chatting some little time, and I had learnt more than one important fact regarding the intentions of Tournier, “what is your opinion regarding the occupation of Ceuta?”

She glanced at me quickly, as though surprised that I should be aware of what she had believed to be an entire secret.

“Of Ceuta?” she echoed. “And what do you at your Embassy know regarding it?”

“We’ve heard a good deal,” I laughed.

“No doubt you’ve heard a good deal that is untrue,” the clever old lady replied, her powdered face again puckering into a smile. “Do you want to know my honest opinion?” she added.

“Yes, I do.”

“Well,” she went on, “I attach very little importance to the rumours of a projected sale or lease of Ceuta to us. I might tell you in confidence,” she went on, dropping her voice, “that from some words I overheard at the garden-party at de Wolkenstein’s I have come to a firm conclusion that, although during the next few years important changes will be made upon the map of the world, Ceuta will remain Spanish. My country will never menace yours in the Mediterranean at that point. A Ministry might be found in Madrid to consider the question of its disposal, but the Spanish people would rise in revolution before they would consent. Spain is very poor, but very proud. Having lost so many of her foreign possessions, she will hold more strongly than ever to Ceuta. There you have the whole situation in a nutshell.”

“Then the report that it is actually sold to France is untrue?” I asked eagerly.

“A mere report I believe it to be.”

“But Spain’s financial indebtedness to France might prove an element of danger when Europe justifies Lord Beaconsfield’s prediction and rushes into war over Morocco?”

“Ah, my dear M’sieur Ingram, I do not agree with the prediction of your great statesman,” the old lady said vehemently. “It is not in that direction in which lies the danger of war, but at the other end of the Mediterranean.”

Somehow I suspected her of a deliberate intention to mislead me in this matter. She was a shrewd woman, who only disclosed her secrets when it was to her own interests or the interests of her friends at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do so. In Paris there is a vast network of French intrigue, and it behoves the diplomatist always to be wary lest he should fall into the pitfalls so cunningly prepared for him. The dividing line between truth and untruth is always so very difficult to define in modern diplomacy. It is when the European situation seems most secure that the match is sufficiently near to fire the mine. Fortunate it is that the public, quick to accept anything that appears in the daily journals, can be placed in a sense of false security by articles inspired by one or other of the embassies interested. If it were not so, European panics would certainly be of frequent occurrence.

My Chief sauntered by, chatting with his close personal friend, Prince Olsoufieff, the Russian Ambassador, who looked a truly striking figure in his white uniform, with the Cross of St. Andrew glittering at his throat. The latter, as he passed, exclaimed confidentially in Russian to my Chief, who understood that language, having been first Secretary of Embassy in Petersburg earlier in his career:

“Da, ya po-ni-mai-ù. Ya sam napishu.” (“Yes, I understand. I will write for you myself.”)

Keen antagonists in diplomacy though they very often were, yet in private life a firm friendship existed between the pair – a friendship dating from the days when the one had been British Attaché in Petersburg and the other had occupied a position in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – that large grey building facing the Winter Palace.

“The lion and the bear strolling together,” laughed the toothless old Baronne, after they had passed. “Olsoufieff is a charming man, but he never accepts my invitations. I cannot tell why. I don’t fancy he considers me his friend.”

“Sibyl was at your reception the other evening,” I remarked suddenly. “She told me she met a man who was a stranger in Paris. His name, I think she said, was Wolf – Rodolphe Wolf. Who is he?”

“He was introduced by de Wolkenstein, the Austrian Ambassador,” she replied quickly. “I did not know him.”

“Have you never met him before?” I asked, looking sharply into her eyes.

“Once, I think, but I am not certain,” she said, with a palpable effort to evade my question.

I smiled.

“Come, madame,” I said good-humouredly, “you know Rodolphe Wolf quite as well as I do. When you last met, his name was not Wolf. Is not that so?”

“Well,” she answered, “now that you put it in that manner I may as well admit that your suggestion is correct.”

“And what is the object of his sudden visit to Paris?”

“I cannot make out,” she replied in a more confidential tone. “As I tell you, de Wolkenstein introduced him, but, as m’sieur knows, I am very quick to detect a face that I have once seen, and I recognised him in an instant.”

“Sibyl told me that he had a long chat with her, and she described him as a most charming fellow.”

“Ah, no doubt! I suspected him and watched. It was evident that he came to my salon in order to meet her.”

“To meet Sibyl! Why?”

“That I cannot tell.”

“But I think, Baronne, we may be both agreed upon one point.”

“And that is?”

“That the man who now calls himself Rodolphe Wolf is here in Paris with some secret motive.”

“I am entirely in accord, m’sieur – quite. Some steps must at once be taken to ascertain that man’s motives.”

“It seems curious that he should have been introduced for the purpose of meeting Sibyl. What information did he want from her?”

“How can we tell? You know better than myself whether she ever knows any secrets of the Embassy.”

“She knows nothing, – of that I am absolutely convinced,” I responded. “Her father is devoted to her; but, nevertheless, he is one of those strict diplomatists who do not believe in trusting women with secrets.”

“Yet Wolf had a distinct object in making a good impression upon her,” she said reflectively.

“No doubt. As soon as she returned she began to talk of him.”

And next instant I recollected the strange effect the news of his arrival in Paris had had upon Yolande, and the curiously tragic event which had subsequently occurred. All was puzzling – all inscrutable.

A silence fell between us. I was revolving in my mind whether I should ask this wizen-faced old leader of Society a further question. With sudden resolve I turned to her again and asked:

“O Baronne, I had quite forgotten. Do you chance to know the Countess de Foville, of Brussels? They have a château down in the Ardennes, and move in the best set in Belgium?”

“De Foville? De Foville?” she repeated. “What, do you mean the mother of that little witch Yolande?”

“Yes. But why do you call her a witch?” I demanded, with feigned laughter.

“Why?” cried the old woman, the expression of her face growing dark with displeasure. “Well, I do not know whether she is a friend of yours, but all I can tell you is that should she be, the best course for you to pursue is to cut her acquaintance.”

“What do you mean?” I gasped.

“I mean exactly what I have said.”

“But I don’t understand,” I cried. “Be more frank with me,” I implored.

“No,” she answered in that hard voice, by which I knew that mention of Yolande’s name had displeased her. “Remember that we are friends, and that sometimes we have interests in common. Therefore, take this piece of advice from an old woman who knows.”

“Knows what?”

“Knows that your friendship with the pretty Yolande is dangerous – extremely dangerous.”

Chapter Ten

Confession

Next day, when the manservant asked me into the tiny boudoir in the Rue de Courcelles, I found Yolande, in a pretty tea-gown of cream silk adorned with lace and ribbons, seated in an armchair in an attitude of weariness. The sun-shutters were closed, as on the previous day, for the heat in Paris that July was insufferable, and in the dim light her wan figure looked very fair and fragile. The qualities which imparted to her a distinct individuality were the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant – of simplicity with elevation – of spirit with sweetness.

She gave vent to a cry of gladness as I entered, rose, and stretching out her hands in welcome, drew a seat for me close to her. I looked at her standing before me in her warm, breathing, human loveliness.

“You are better, Yolande? Ah! how glad I am!” I commenced. “Last night I believed that you were dead.”

“And if I had died would it really have mattered so very much to you?” she asked in a low, intense voice. “You have forgotten me for three whole years until now.”

“I know – I know!” I cried. “Forgive me.”

“I have already forgiven,” she said, allowing her hand still to remain in mine. “But I have been thinking to-day – thinking ever so much.”

Her voice was weak and faltering, and I saw that she was not herself.

“Thinking of what?”

“Of you. I have been wondering whether, if I had died, you would have sometimes remembered me?”

“Remembered you?” I said earnestly. “Why, of course, dearest. Why do you speak in such a melancholy tone?”

“Because – well, because I am unhappy, Gerald!” she cried, bursting into sudden tears. “Ah! you do not know how I suffer – you can never know!”

I bent and stroked her hair, that beautiful red-gold hair that I had so often heard admired in the great salons in Brussels. It had been bound but lightly by her maid, and was secured by a blue ribbon. She had apologised for receiving me thus, but declared that her head ached, and it was easier so. Doctor Deane had called twice that morning, and had pronounced her entirely out of danger.

“But why are you suffering?” I asked, caressing her and striving to charm away her tears. “Cannot you confide in me?”

She shook her head in despair, and her body was shaken by a convulsive sob.

“Surely there is confidence between us?” I urged. “Do you not remember that day long ago when we walked one evening in the sunset hand-in-hand, as was our wont, along the river-path towards La Roche? Do you not remember how you told me that in future you would have no single secret from me?”

“Yes,” she answered hoarsely, with an effort, “I recollect.”

“Then you intend to break your promise to me?” I whispered earnestly. “Surely you will not do this, Yolande? You will not hide from me the cause of all this bitterness of yours?” She was silent. Her breast, beneath its lace, rose quickly and fell again. Her tear-filled eyes were fixed upon the carpet.

“I would not break my promise,” she said at last, clasping my hand convulsively and lifting her eyes to mine; “but, alas! it is now imperative.”

“Why imperative?”

“I must suffer alone,” she responded gloomily, shaking her head. Her countenance was as pale as her gown, and she shivered as though she were cold, although the noonday heat was suffocating.

“Because you refuse to tell me anything or allow me to assist you?” I said. “This is not in accordance with the promise made and sealed by your lips on that evening long ago.”

“Nor have your actions been in accordance with your own promise,” she said slowly and distinctly.

“To what do you refer?”

“You told me that you loved me, Gerald,” she said in a deep voice, suddenly grown calm. “You swore by all you held most sacred that I was all the world to you, and that no one should come between us. Yet past events have shown that you have forgotten those words of yours on the day when we idled in the Bois beneath the trees. You, too, remember that day, do you not – the day when our lips met for the first time, and we both believed our path would in future be strewn with flowers? Ah!” she sighed, “and what an awakening life has been to me since then!”

“We parted because of your refusal to satisfy me as to the real state of your feelings towards the man who was my enemy,” I said rather warmly.

“But was it justifiable?” she asked in a tone of deep reproach and mingled sweetness. Her blue eyes looked full upon me – those eyes that had held me in such fascination in the golden days of youth. “Has any single fact which you have since discovered verified your suspicions? Tell me truthfully;” and she leaned towards me in an attitude of deepest earnestness.

“No,” I answered honestly, “I cannot say that my suspicions have ever been verified.”

“And because of that you have returned to me when it is too late.”

“Too late!” I cried. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I have said. You have come back to me when it is too late.”

“You speak in enigmas, Yolande. Why not be more explicit?”

Her pale lips trembled, her eyes were brimming with tears, her chilly hand quivered in mine. She did not speak for some moments, but at last said in a low, tremulous voice half choked by emotion:

“Once you loved me, Gerald, – of that I feel confident; and I reciprocated your affection, God knows! Our love was, perhaps, curious, inasmuch as you were English and I was of a different creed and held different ideas from those which you considered right. It is always the same with a man and woman of different nationality – there must be a give-and-take principle between them. Between us, however, there was perfect confidence until, by a strange combination of circumstances – by a stroke of the sword of Fate – that incident occurred which led to our estrangement.”

She paused, her blanched lips shut tight. “Well?” I asked, “I am all attention. Why is it too late now for me to make reparation for the past?”

I loved her with all my soul. I was heedless of those words of the old Baronne, of Anderson’s suspicions, and Kaye’s denunciation. Even if she were a spy, I adored her. The fire of that old love had swept upon me, and I could not hold back, even though her touch might be as that of a leper and her lips venomous.

“Reparation is impossible,” she answered hoarsely. “Is not that sufficient?”

“No, it is not sufficient,” I answered clearly. “I will not be put off by such an answer.”

“It were better,” she cried – “better that I had died yesterday than suffer like this. You rescued me from death only to torture me.”

Her words aroused within me a distinct suspicion that her strange illness had been brought to pass because, using some mysterious means, she had made an attempt against her own life. I believed that she had suffered, and was still suffering, from the effects of some poison, the exact nature of which neither Deane nor Trépard could as yet determine.

“I do not seek to torture you, dearest,” I protested. “Far from it. I merely want to know the truth, in order that I may share your unhappiness, as your betrothed ought to do.”

“But you are not my betrothed.”

“I was once.”

“But not now. You taunt me with breaking that promise which I made three years ago, yet you yourself it was who played me false – who left me for your prim, strait-laced English miss!”

In an instant the truth was plain. She was aware that I had transferred my affections to Edith! Someone had told her – no doubt with a good many embellishments, or perhaps some scandalous story. In the salons through which we of the diplomatic circle are compelled to move, women’s tongues are ever at work match-making and mischief-making. On the Continent love and politics run always hand-in-hand. That is the reason why the most notorious of the demi-monde in Paris, in Vienna, and in Berlin are the secret agents of their respective Governments; and many are the honest men innocently denounced through jealousy and kindred causes. A false declaration of one or other of these unscrupulous spies has before now caused the downfall of a Ministry or the disgrace of a noble and patriotic politician.

“I know to whom you refer,” I said, with bowed head, after a moment’s pause. “It is currently reported that I love her. I have loved her. I do not seek to deny it. When a man sustains such a blow as I sustained before we parted, he often rushes to another woman for consolation. The influence of that second woman often prevents him from going to the bad altogether. It has been so in my case.”

“And you love her now?” she cried, the fire of fierce jealousy in her eyes. “You cannot deny it!”

“I do deny it,” I cried. “True, until yesterday I held her in esteem, even in affection; but it is not so now. All my love for you, Yolande, has returned to me. Our parting has rendered you dearer and sweeter to me than ever.”

“I cannot believe it,” she exclaimed falteringly.

“I swear that it is so. In all my life, although am compelled to treat women with courtesy and sometimes to affect flirtation, because of my profession as a diplomatist, I have loved only one woman – yourself;” and I raised her chilly hand to my lips, kissing it fervently.

Mine was no mere caprice at that moment. With an all-consuming passion I loved her, and was prepared on her account to make any sacrifice she demanded. Let the reader remember what had already been told me, and reflect that, like many another man, I loved madly, and was heedless of any consequences that might follow. In this particular I was not alone. Thousands before me had been allured to their ruin by a woman’s eyes, just as thousands of brave women’s hearts have been broken and their lives wrecked by men’s false oaths of fidelity. I have heard wiseacres say that the woman only suffers in such cases; the man never. Whether that rule proves always true will be shown in this strange story of my own love.

She drew her hand away slowly, but forcibly, saying:

“You cannot love two women. Already you have shown a preference for a wife of your own people.”

“It is all over between us,” I protested. “Mine was a mere passing fancy, engendered, I think, by the loneliness I suffered when I lost you.”

“Ah,” (she smiled sadly), “that is all very well! A woman, when once played false by the man she loves and trusts, is never the same —never!”

“Then am I to understand, Yolande, that you refuse to pardon me, or to accept my affection?”

“I have already pardoned you,” she faltered; “but to accept the love you once withdrew from me without just reason is, I regret to say, impossible.”

“You speak coldly, as though you were refusing a mere invitation to dinner, or something of no greater importance,” I protested. “I offer you my whole heart, my love – nay, my life;” and I held her hand again, looking straight into those wonderful eyes, now so calm, so serious, that my gaze wavered before them.

Slowly she shook her head, and her trembling breast rose and fell again.

“Ours was a foolish infatuation,” she answered with an effort. “It is best that we should both of us forget.”

“Forget!” I cried. “But I can never forget you, Yolande. You are my love. You are all the world to me.”

Her eyes were grave, and I saw that tears stood in them.

“No,” she protested quietly; “do not say that. I cannot be any more to you than other women whom you meet daily. Besides, I know well that in the diplomatic service marriage is a serious drawback to any save an ambassador.”

“When a man is in love as I am with you, dearest, he throws all thoughts of his career to the winds; personal interests are naught where true love is concerned.”

“You must not – nay, you shall not – wreck your future on my account,” she declared in a low, intense voice. “It is not just either to yourself or to the Englishwoman who loves you.”

“Why do you taunt me with that, Yolande?” I asked reproachfully. “I do not love her. I have never truly loved her. I was lonely after you had gone out of my life, and she was amusing, – that was all.”

“And now you find me equally amusing – eh?” she remarked, with just a touch of bitter sarcasm.

“Why should you be jealous of her?” I asked. “You might just as well be jealous of Sibyl, Lord Barmouth’s daughter.”

“With the latter you are certainly on terms of most intimate friendship,” she answered with a smile. “I really wonder that I did not object to her in the days long ago.”

“Ah!” I laughed, “you certainly had no cause. It is true that we have been good friends ever since the day when she arrived home from the convent-school at Bruges, a prim young miss with her hair tied up with ribbon. Thrown constantly together, as we were, I became her male confidant and intimate friend; hence my licence to give her counsel in many matters and sometimes to criticise those actions of which I don’t approve.”

“Then if that is so, you care a little for her – just a little? Now admit it.”

“I don’t admit anything of the kind,” I answered frankly. “For five years we have been constantly together; and times without number, at Lady Barmouth’s request, I have acted as her escort here and there, until she looks upon me as a kind of necessary appendage who has a right to chaff her about her flirtations and annoy her by judicious sarcasm. I don’t entertain one single spark of love for her. In brief, she has developed into an essentially smart girl, in the true sense of the word, and by reason of our constant companionship knows that to attempt a flirtation with me would result in a most dismal failure. I accused her once, not long ago, of having designs upon my heart, whereupon she replied that to accomplish such a thing would be about as easy as to win the affection of the bronze Neptune in the garden-fountain of the Embassy.”

“You have been seen together a great deal of late?”

“Who told you so?”

“A friend who knows you both.” Then she added: “From my information I hear that last season you danced so much with her and were so constantly at her side that people were talking of a match between you.”

“Ridiculous!” I exclaimed. “Of course gossips are always too ready to jump to ill-formed conclusions. As one of the staff of the Embassy, and her most intimate male friend, it was only courtesy to take her beneath my care. When she had no other partner and wanted to dance, then she sometimes asked me. I think she did it to annoy me, for she knew that I was never fond of dancing.”