Sir William Magnay

“ Herriard understood the astuteness that meant to leave no incriminating evidence of its presence. Then Gastineau, with a passing scrutiny of the revolver, raised his eyes to Herriard’s face.
“Time is up,” he said incisively, with an ominous squaring of the jaw. “I have given you, as between man and man—I was going to say, old friends—my reasons, more sufficient, perhaps, than agreeable. After all, under the veneer of civilization, the rough, barbaric sense of self-preservation is to-day as firmly existent as ever. You have played a risky game, Herriard, and have lost it.” ”

“ He thought of Gastineau and his almost scoffing scepticism. He longed to feel able to tell her that all fear and doubt were passed, yet, with the memory of his mentor’s views, he could not, and felt a brute in consequence.
“I believe it,” he answered, hoping the evasion was not apparent. “My own opinion is that this man’s evidence settles the question so far as you are concerned.”
“But you think others may not share it?” she asked shrewdly.
“I think,” he answered, “that others, who are interested, as half the world is, in believing the worst, may be reluctant to share it.” ”

“ Countess—Alexia, forgive my boldness when I tell you that we, you and I, have no right, it would be an act of short-sighted folly, to throw ourselves away on inferior mates. You must know this, you who are so clever, who can read men and the world; I cannot imagine that you can be blind to the hideous mistake you would commit in allying yourself to a mere puppet, a weakling, the simulacrum of a man, such as Geoffrey Herriard. ”

“ Alexia laughed. “Sometimes, where the woman is a fool. I don’t think I am a fool, dear, or that you are unworthy of all I believe you to be.”
Ah, that miserable secret that lay between them. Could he, dared he, tell her that all through the brilliant [200] career for which she admired him he had been but the mouthpiece of a cleverer brain, and that man, of all others, Paul Gastineau? Yet if the confession were to come at all it should in honour be made forthwith. Every hour he delayed it added lie to lie. ”

“ You imagine in your stupidity that people in our position can defy appearances and do just as we like. So we can; but the world very soon takes care to show us that if we like to drop out it won’t detain us. To-day the world thinks exactly as much of us as we show it we think of ourselves. It was all very well while the Feudal System lingered, and there was no moneyed mob to challenge us. In these days of shallow pretension and surface estimation a Duke in a bad hat is thought less of than a bookmaker in a good one; a dowdy Duchess cannot hold her own against a smart milliner. ”

“ It was that they should be married at once, with the closest secrecy that might hope to elude even Gastineau’s vigilance, and that they should leave England, as already planned, for a long sojourn on Count von Rohnburg’s Austrian estate. Certainly it seemed but a poor method of securing safety;—was there a corner on the globe where a man might hope to hide from that inexorable, unswerving pursuit?—still there was the chance, the only one, of snatching a fearful, short-lived joy in defiance of the incarnate malignity which forbade it. ”

“ In the still depths of the forest, in a fairy-land which seemed far from the ken of worldly strife and schemes, Herriard felt he had left the events of a few weeks back years behind him; he could laugh at his fears. Paul Gastineau was no longer a haunting terror, but merely a strange episode.
What creatures of our impressions, our surroundings we are. How one mind, determined, inscrutable, can dominate a weaker: how long the paralyzing effect of a stronger will lingers, to be weakened and at last banished not by a human effort but by the external agency of a changed environment. ”

“ Gastineau’s spite was still keenly alive; love had turned to hate. It was hate. Herriard knew it now, that had gleamed in Gastineau’s eyes when they had spoken of Alexia. In the same instant a great feeling of relief, of joy almost, came to Herriard in the knowledge that the other man’s judgment of the case had been wilfully false. Not another doubt of Alexia’s innocence could ever cross his mind now that he had found the opinion of the acuter brain was warped and worthless, a mere slander. ”

“ Like accusing spirits there now rose to his mind the quasi dead fighter’s vindictive attacks on men he had hated and envied, of which he, Geoffrey Herriard, poor tool, had been the mouthpiece; the venomous stinging thrusts he had been taught to deliver so deftly; the terrible, transcendent irony and sarcasm into which he had been coached with such untiring pains. Why should a man who had, by a strange combination of accident and choice, taken leave of the world, why should he retain and revel in all this eager vindictiveness, except that his soul was black as sin? Gastineau was a very Iago ”

“ THE FIERY ORDEAL BEFORE many days had passed Countess Alexia had reason to know that the enemy she had made and defied was at work against her. Her instinctive judgment of her unwelcome admirer’s character had surely prepared her for this. And in truth Aubrey Playford was one of those men whose chivalry is but skin-deep: it is merely the veneer of their education and breeding, the mask which covers a malignant and unscrupulous soul. The man could be trusted to act according to the recognized codes of honour and propriety so long as his own interest and feelings were not deeply touched ”

“ An awkward adversary, ever in deadly earnest, who always fenced with the button off; his enemies and defeated opponents, and they were many, said not too scrupulously; but he fought to win, and usually did win, leaving mere niceties and quibbles to the schoolmen; and to have the knack of winning means much, if not everything. It meant much for Paul Gastineau. He became the most talked about man at the Bar, and his enemies being too human to let his praises pass in silence, simply added their voices to the babble that made him known. ”

“ And it was in a great measure to that we owe a cure which comes as near to a miracle as science has yet attained. Ah! such strength of will, such fixity of purpose, what would the world be if they were general? A paradise in which all evils and difficulties would be overcome—or a hell of restless intellect. Well,” he gave a shrug and a smile, “we are better as we are. Nevertheless your friend is a very remarkable man: it is a personality with which I am pleased, as an experience, to have been brought in contact.”
“I can understand that,” Herriard said, with a shade of gloom. ”

“ But from the light of that instant’s glance he saw no encouragement.
“It is easy,” he went on, for the pause had been but momentary, and Alexia showed no desire to interrupt him, “it is easy to moralize and to propound codes of so-called honour, but when a man is possessed by a love as desperate, as all-absorbing as mine, he is scarcely to be blamed if, while human nature remains as it is, he seizes any advantage which fate may give him.” ”

“ Yesterday he had thought the truth of the matter need never be spoken, to-day he felt that the disclosure must sooner or later be forced upon him. And if it was so surely to come, Alexia must at any cost learn the truth from his lips, not from another’s, least of all Gastineau’s. Yet he recognized that their secret was Gastineau’s weapon to crush Alexia’s love for him. How long would it be before he made his existence, his presence known to the woman of his desire; how long before he dealt that telling blow? He ought to forestall him ”

“ A PORTENT ONE evening the monotony of the Herriard’s delightful existence under the shadow of the grey old Schloss was broken by the appearance of a company of poor strolling players. They were, it appeared, a band of humble comedians and pantomimists who, in the more rural and remote districts, went from village to village, to gain a precarious livelihood by giving a crude medley of melodrama and farce, interspersed with singing and acrobatic feats. To gain permission for a short performance at a great house naturally was, when such an opportunity presented itself, much to be desired. ”

“ Blaydon handed the Duke three-eights of an inch of broken steel which he had found imbedded in poor Beauty’s heart, and received in return a cheque which established a record price for the metal. But old Blaydon knew himself to be a dying man at the time; an exposé could hardly hurt him, and he had a large family to provide for. As a matter of fact he died a few months afterwards, to the dear Duchess’s great content. It’s extraordinary how fussy some good people can be over the idea of a scandal. ”

“ Gastineau smiled. “If I am far from believing it, it does not follow that I doubt your sincerity in making the declaration. Only, as I have said, fortunately or unfortunately, I know more of the world in general and of Mr. Geoffrey Herriard in particular than does that person himself. No, my dear fellow,”—there was a revolting irony in the term—“when I am a great man, a very great man, as, bar accidents, I mean to be, it would be a quite irresistible temptation to one like yourself to shake the ladder just as I had reached the topmost rung. Don’t protest; I know human nature. ”

“ He could scarcely hope to argue successfully against that baffling attitude of dislike.
“I wish,” he continued, schooling his face and manner to an insinuating humility, “that you would try to find it in your heart to entertain a more favourable estimate of me. Alexia,” he went on passionately, tactfully taking no more than a step forward as he saw her shrink from his advance, “let me call you once by that name, if it is the last time; Alexia, why can you not love me? What, in Heaven’s name, is the curse upon me that gives hate in return where I have beggared myself for love? ”

“ Herriard, walking briskly, turned up Hertford Street, and presently taking a little used thoroughfare, made his way deep into the intricacies of Mayfair, that curious maze of mansions and slums where Peers live next door to slop-shops, and the chorus from a footman’s Free-and-Easy at the public-house across the street may keep awake a dowager countess or weave melody into ducal dreams. ”

“ But when once the deception had been decided on, the busy, acute brain, as keen as ever, set to work strenuously to perfect all the details of the business. And something more. The hidden light was to burn as brightly as ever behind its screen of lies; the dead hand was to strike as viciously as of old, the stilled voice to sting through other lips. Gastineau studied Herriard and came to the conclusion that he was fitted for the purpose he had in mind. ”

“ You have some news for us, Greetland?” cried the high-pitched voice of Baron de Daun, as he came across the floor and stood over the group. In his way the Baron was as great a scandal-monger and blagueur as the other man, but he tore reputations to shreds with greater violence than his English confrère, who was, after all, more of an artist. On the other hand, the Baron had greater justification in peeping through the chinks in society’s shutters, for was he not a diplomatist?
“A very extraordinary thing has come to light,” Greetland said, with an air befitting the communication. ”

“ The unconscious irony of the words seemed to stab him. “So little compared with what I should have [199] done,” he murmured; “so far from what I should be.”
Alexia laughed protestingly. “My dear Geoffrey, you are abnormally, unreasonably modest. That the world does not take you at your own valuation is lucky for you, and the world.”
“Yes,” he said, “it is lucky, at least for me. Perhaps if you took me at my own valuation you would not look at me.”
“Geoffrey!” she protested. There is a point beyond which the self-abasement of the man she loves begins to jar on a woman. ”