E. Phillips Oppenheim

“ Lucille came in, as beautiful as ever, but with tired lines under her full dark eyes. She sank into a low chair with listless grace.
“Reginald Brott again, I suppose,” she remarked curtly. “I wish the man had never existed.”
“That is a very cruel speech, Lucille,” the Prince said, with a languishing glance towards her, “for if it had not been for Brott we should never have dared to call you out from your seclusion.”
“Then more heartily than ever,” Lucille declared, “I wish the man had never been born. You cannot possibly flatter yourself, Prince, that your summons was a welcome one.” ”

“ Sabin’s face, no longer pleasant and courteous, had taken to itself some very grim lines.
“I am a weak man, Mr. Horser, but I am never without the means of self-defence,” Mr. Sabin said in a still, cold tone. “Be so good as to sit down in that easy-chair.”
Mr. Horser hesitated. For one moment he stood as though about to carry out his first intention. He stood glaring at his opponent, his face contracted into a snarl, his whole appearance hideous, almost bestial. Mr. Sabin smiled upon him contemptuously—the maddening, compelling smile of the born aristocrat. ”

“ Sabin was for a moment very serious indeed. The advice given in such a manner was full of forebodings to him. The lines from the corners of his mouth seemed graven into his face.
“Felix,” he said slowly, “I am sometimes conscious of the fact that I am passing into that period of life which we call old age. My ambitions are dead, my energies are weakened. For many years I have toiled—the time has come for rest. Of all the great passions which I have felt there remains but one—Lucille. Life without her is worth nothing to me. I am weary of solitude, I am weary of everything except Lucille. ”

“ Mr. Skinner, with his small bowler hat on the back of his head, a fresh cigar in the corner of his mouth, and his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, strolled along Broadway with something akin to a smile parting his lips, and showing his yellow teeth.
“Darned old fool,” he muttered. “To marry a slap-up handsome woman like that, and then pretend not to know what it means when she bolts. Guess I’ll spoil his supper to-night.”
Mr. Sabin, however, was recovering his spirits. He, too, was leaning back in the corner of his carriage with a faint smile brightening his hard, stern face. ”

“ Only I wanted you to understand why I once more set foot in Europe. I wanted you to understand why I am here. It is to win back Lucille. It is like that with me, Helene. I, who once schemed and plotted for an empire, am once more a schemer and a worker, but for no other purpose than to recover possession of the woman whom I love. You do not recognise me, Helene. I do not recognise myself. ”

“ Lady Carey asked curiously.
“I am off to South America,” he said. “It is a great undeveloped country, and there is room for us to move there. Muriel, you know what I want of you.”
“My good man,” she answered, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“You will come with me,” he begged. “You will not send me into exile so lonely, a wanderer! Together there may be a great future before us. You have ambition, you love intrigue, excitement, danger. ”

“ Lucille and I were married by a most respectable Episcopalian clergyman. We have documentary evidence. Besides, if Lucille is Calypso, what about Penelope?”
Lady Carey smiled thoughtfully.
“I have always thought,” she said, “that Penelope was a myth. In your case I should say that Penelope represents a return to sanity—to the ordinary ways of life.”
Mr. Sabin and Lucille exchanged swift glances. He raised his eyebrows.
“Our little idyll,” he said, “seems to be the sport and buffet of every one. You forget that I am of the old world. I do not understand modernity.” ”

“ You can have had no sympathy with Brott—a hopeless plebeian, a very paragon of Anglo-Saxon stupidity?”
Lucille laughed scornfully.
“Reginald Brott is a man, at any rate, and an honest one,” she answered. “But I am too selfish to think much of him. It is myself whom I pity. I have a home, Prince, and a husband. I want them both.”
“You amaze me,” the Prince said slowly. “Lucille, indeed, you amaze me. You have been buried alive for three years. Positively we believed that our summons would sound to you like a message from Heaven.” ”

“ The Prince of Saxe Leinitzer bowed low towards the speaker.
“Dear Lucille,” he said, so respectfully that the faint irony of his tone was lost to most of those present, “I, too, am of your opinion. The man who has a right, real or fancied, to claim you must indeed be a coward if he suffered dangers of any sort to stand in the way. After all, dangers from us! Is it not a little absurd?”
Lucille looked away from the Prince with a little shudder. He laughed softly, and drank his liqueur. ”

“ I live my life to please myself. I admit it. Why not? It is simply applying the same sort of philosophy to my life as you have applied to yours. My enemies can find plenty to say about me—but never that I have been false to a friend. Why do you keep me always at arm’s length, as though I were one of those who wished you evil?”
“Lady Carey,” Mr. Sabin said, “I will not affect to misunderstand you, and I am flattered that you should consider my good will of any importance. But you are the friend of the Prince of Saxe Leinitzer. You are one of those even now who are working actively against me. ”

“ Lady Carey laughed.
“My dear,” she said to Lucille, “you and I may as well retire in despair. Can’t you see the sort of woman Mr. Brott admires? She isn’t like us a bit. She is probably a healthy, ruddy-cheeked young person who lives in the country, gets up to breakfast to pour out the coffee for some sort of a male relative, goes round the garden snipping off roses in big gloves and a huge basket, interviews the cook, orders the dinner, makes fancy waistcoats for her husband, and failing a sewing maid, does the mending for the family. You and I, Lucille, are not like that.” ”

“ Yet both somehow gave evidence of the smouldering fires beneath.
“Lucille,” he said, “I find you hard to understand to-day. You have made me your slave, you came once more into my life at its most critical moment, and for your sake I have betrayed a great trust. My conscience, my faith, and although that counts for little, my political career, were in the balance against my love for you. You know which conquered. At your bidding I have made myself the jest of every man who buys the halfpenny paper and calls himself a politician. My friends heap abuse upon me, my enemies derision. ”

“ Surely we are old friends. We should understand one another. It is not a great deal that I ask from your kindness—not a great deal to you, but it is all the difference between happiness and misery for me.”
“This is a very worn-out game, Prince,” Lucille said coldly. “You have been making love to women in very much the same manner for twenty years, and I—well, to be frank, I am utterly weary of being made love to like a doll. Laugh at me as you will, my husband is the only man who interests me in the slightest. ”

“ Such hideous misgovernment as generations of your countrymen had suffered was logically bound to bring its own reprisal.”
“There is truth in what you say,” Mr. Sabin admitted. He did not want to talk about the French Revolution.
“You are a stranger in London, are you not?” Mr. Brott asked.
“I feel myself one,” Mr. Sabin answered. “I have been away for a few years, and I do not think that there is a city in the world where social changes are so rapid. I should perhaps except the cities of the country from which I have come. But then America is a universe of itself.” ”

“ Sabin said. “It is the incorrigible vanity of the man which will not be denied. He has been taught to believe himself irresistible. I have never doubted you for a single moment, Lucille. I could not. But you have been the slave of these people long enough. As you say, your task is over. Its failure was always certain. Brott believes in his destiny, and it will be no slight thing which will keep him from following it. They must give you back to me.”
“We will go back to America,” she said. “I have never been so happy as at Lenox.” ”

“ You have made him seem a fool, but, Lucille, to tell you the truth, I am sorry that we did not leave this country altogether alone. There is not the soil for intrigue here, or the possibility. Then, too, the police service is too stolid, too inaccessible. And even our friends, for whose aid we are here—well, you heard the Duke. The cast-iron Saxon idiocy of the man. The aristocracy here are what they call bucolic. It is their own fault. They have intermarried with parvenus and Americans for generations. They are a race by themselves. We others may shake ourselves free from them. ”

“ Dear me, how you have changed!”
“Time,” he said, “will not stand still for all of us. Yet my memory tells me how possible it would be—for indeed those days seem but as yesterday.”
He looked up at her with a sudden jealousy. His tone shook with passion. No one would have recognised Brott now. In his fiercest hour of debate, his hour of greatest trial, he had worn his mask, always master of himself and his speech. And now he had cast it off. His eyes were hungry, his lips twitched.
“As yesterday! Lucille, I could kill you when I think of those days. ”

“ He is an old man, and a man who has failed in the great things of life. I, on the other hand, can offer you a great future. Saxe Leinitzer, as you know, is a kingdom of its own, and, Lucille, I stand well with the Emperor. The Socialist party in Berlin are strong and increasing. He needs us. Who can say what honours may not be in store for us? For I, too, am of the Royal House, Lucille. I am his kinsman. He never forgets that. Come, throw aside this restlessness. I will tell you how to deal with Brott, and the publicity, after all, will be nothing. ”

“ Lucille went very pale.
“This is horrible!” she murmured
“The Prince is a little annoyed, naturally,” Mr. Sabin said. “It is vexing to have your plans upset in such a manner.”
She shuddered.
“He is hateful! Victor, I fear that he does not mean to let me leave Dorset House just yet. I am almost inclined to become, like you, an outcast. Who knows—we might go free. Bloodshed is always avoided as much as possible, and I do not see how else they could strike at me. Social ostracism is their chief weapon. But in America that could not hurt us.” ”

“ May I suggest that you come with me instead to the Milan?”
“Victor! You here?”
Mr. Sabin smiled as he admitted the obvious fact. The Prince’s face was as black as night.
“Believe me,” Mr. Sabin said, turning to the Prince, “I sympathise entirely with your feelings at the present moment. I myself have suffered in precisely the same manner. The fact is, intrigue in this country is almost an impossibility. At Paris, Vienna, Pesth, how different! You raise your little finger, and the deed is done. Superfluous people—like myself—are removed like the hairs from your chin. ”

“ Sabin reminded him. “My time is yours.”
“You and I,” Felix said, “have had our periods of bitter enmity. With your marriage to Lucille these, so far as I am concerned, ended for ever. I will even admit that in my younger days I was prejudiced against you. That has passed away. You have been all your days a bold and unscrupulous schemer, but ends have at any rate been worthy ones. To-day I am able to regard you with feelings of friendliness. You are the husband of my dear sister, and for years I know that you made her very happy. ”

“ The Prince had departed. Mr. Sabin lit a cigarette and stood on the hearthrug. His eyes were bright with the joy of fighting.
“Lucille,” he said, “I see that you have not touched your liqueur. Oblige me by drinking it. You will find it excellent.”
She came over to him and hung upon his arm. He threw his cigarette away and kissed her upon the lips.
“Victor,” she murmured, “I am afraid. You have been rash!”
“Dearest,” he answered, “it is better to die fighting than to stand aside and watch evil things. But after all, there is no fear. Come! Your cloak and dressing case!” ”

“ Every one drank, and every one sat down again with a pleasant thrill of excitement at this unique scene. Felix leaned back in his chair and marveled.
“One would have imagined,” he murmured, “that America and England together were at war with the rest of the world and had won a great victory. To think that this is all the result of a yacht race. It is incredible!”
“All your life, my dear Felix,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “you have underrated the sporting instinct. It has a great place amongst the impulses of the world. See how it has brought these people together.” ”

“ Letheringham’s Cabinet, of course, would be a moderate Liberal one, a paragon of milk and water in effectiveness. If I go in alone we make history. The moment of issue has come. And, Prince, although I have pleaded with all the force and all the earnestness I know, Lucille remains elusive. If I choose for her side—she promises me—reward. But it is vague to me. I don’t, I can’t understand! I want her for my wife, I want her for the rest of my life—nothing else. Tell me, is there any barrier to this? There are no complications in her life which I do not know of? ”

“ There is plain speech for you. Do not be absurd. Come within, and let us talk. What do you fear? The house is full of servants, and the carriage can wait for you here.”
Lucille smiled at him—a maddening smile.
“I am not a child,” she said, “and such conversations as I am forced to hold with you will not be under your own roof. Be so good as to tell the coachman to drive to Dorset House.”
The Prince turned on his heel with a furious oath.
“He can drive you to Hell,” he answered thickly.
Lucille found the Duchess and Lady Carey together at Dorset House. ”

“ But, on the other hand, Lucille is the dearest thing to me in life.”
The Prince’s expression was wholly sympathetic. The derision which lurked behind he kept wholly concealed. A strong man so abjectly in the toils, and he to be chosen for his confidant! It was melodrama with a dash of humour.
“If I am to help you,” the Prince said, “I must know everything. Have you made any proposals to Lucille? In plain words, how much of your political future are you disposed to sacrifice?”
“All!” Brott said hoarsely. “All for a certainty of her. Not one jot without.” ”

“ We should all be in the most deadly peril. Lucille, I would have spared you this anxiety if I could, but your defiance made it necessary. There was no other way of getting you away from England to-night except by telling you the truth.”
“Away from England to-night,” she repeated vaguely. “But I will not go. It is impossible.”
“It is imperative,” the Prince declared, with a sharp ring of authority in his tone. “It is your own folly, for which you have to pay. You went secretly to Emil Sachs. You paid surreptitious visits to your husband, which were simply madness. ”

“ Everywhere treasures of art, yet everywhere the restraining hand of the artist. The faint smell of dead rose leaves hung about the room. Already one seemed conscious of a certain emptiness as though the genius of the place had gone. Mr. Sabin leaned heavily upon his stick, and his head drooped lower and lower. A soft, respectful voice came to him from the other room.
“In five minutes, sir, the carriage will be at the door. I have your coat and hat here.”
Mr. Sabin looked up.
“I am quite ready, Duson!” he said.
The servants in the hall stood respectfully aside to let him pass. ”

“ I am sure that years ago I should have laughed at any one who had told me that I, Georgina Croxton, should ever belong to such a thing as a secret society, even though it had some connection with so harmless and excellent an organisation as the Primrose League.”
“It does seem remarkable,” Lucille murmured.
“But look what terrible times have come upon us,” the Duchess continued, without heeding the interruption. “When I was a girl a Radical was a person absolutely without consideration. Now all our great cities are hot-beds of Socialism and—and anarchism. ”