The Under-Secretary

While this oration was in full blast he noticed a committee-man uncovering the piano, by which he knew that “harmony” was to embellish the hot whiskey period. At last, however, he managed to excuse himself, upon the plea that he must return to the House for a Division that was expected; and as soon as he was out in the High Street he breathed more freely. Then he hurried to the train, and, entering the express from Portsmouth, tried to forget the spot he had visited in that small belt of forest – the scene that too often commanded the most vivid powers of his memory.

“I was a fool ever to have gone there! – an absolute fool!” he murmured to himself, as he flung himself back in the first-class compartment when alone. “I ran an unnecessary risk. And that man who came so suddenly upon me just as I was leaving! What if he had watched and recognised me? If so, he would certainly gossip about my presence there, describe my actions – and then – ”

He was silent; his face became blanched and drawn.

“Even though six years have passed, the affair is not forgotten,” he went on in a hard voice. “It is still the local mystery which Scotland Yard failed to elucidate. Yes,” he added, “I was a fool – a confounded fool! What absurd whim took me to that place of all others, I can’t imagine. I’m mad – mad!” he cried in wild despair. “This madness is the shadow of suicide!”

Instead of going down to the House he drove back at once to his chambers.

Upon his table was a note from Claudia, affectionate as usual, and full of regret that they had not met again on the previous night – when they had been so suddenly separated at Penarth House.

“What do you think of little Muriel Mortimer? I saw you speaking with her,” she wrote. “She was full of you when I met her shopping in Bond Street this morning. You have made quite an impression, my dear Dudley. But don’t altogether forget me, will you?”

Forget? Could he ever forget the woman whom he loved, and yet despised? Strange that Claudia should have plotted with Lady Meldrum against his bachelor estate, and should have determined to bring about this marriage with Muriel Mortimer!

In a frenzy of despair he cast her letter into the flames. He recollected the words she had uttered to him in that room on the previous night, the sweet words of love and tenderness that had held him spellbound. No, there was no other woman in all the world save her – and yet, she was false and fickle, as all the world knew.

Life’s comforts are its cares. He smiled bitterly as he reflected upon that phrase, which was an extract from one of his many brilliant speeches. If a person has no cares, that person must make them, or be wretched; care is actually an employment, an action; sometimes even a joy. And so it is with love. Life and love must have employment and action. There must be responsibility and a striving to reach a goal; for if not, both the power to endure and the power to give comfort are shrunken and crippled.

When Dudley Chisholm was young he had long worshipped an ideal. But when he found his idol to be undeserving of the idolatry, madness fell upon him, and he accepted the creed of the prodigal. Raking over the ashes of the numerous bonfires he had made, for which his senses had been the fuel, he now found a revelation of his inner self. He recognised for the first time his weakness and his unworthiness. He wanted something better than he had known – not in others, but in himself. He had discovered a spot of tenderness in his heart that had, so to speak, remained virgin soil.

“Could a really smart woman possess any nice sense of honour?” he asked himself for the hundredth time. If she is endowed with any particular intelligence, and the world discovers it, then society is prone to think that she is necessarily a “schemer,” and, unless her friends know her very well, she is soon given a place upon society’s black list as an “adventuress,” a term which applies to the whole gamut of West End wickedness. No, after all, few women can be both honourable and smart.

His thoughts wandered back into the past, as they so frequently did, and a moan came from his heart. He remembered Claudia as an ideal woman of whom a cruel Fate had robbed him in those days before he learned the world to be what it is. And he still loved her – even though this great gulf yawned between them.

Dudley Chisholm was blind to Claudia’s true character. He was attracted to her by her intellect and her physical magnetism. In these days of her freedom she had dared to be herself, and having knowledge of herself and of men, she had developed his admiration up to her own standpoint. She had taught him women as she knew them herself. She was playing with all the edged tools of daring because she felt that she was the stronger of the two, and that he would dare no further than she willed. She was charmed with the freedom she allowed herself; while he was, in a manner, flattered by her apparent constancy to him and by her finding in him anything that interested a woman of her attainments and popularity. Thus he had become thoroughly interested, madly infatuated, as well as honestly in love.

Men so seldom understand the inner nature, the designing nature, if I may be forgiven the expression, of some women. Such women are unscrupulous in their dealings both with men and women. The West End is full of them. They live for what they can get out of their acquaintances, instead of for what they can do for them. They give as much love to all as to one, unless that one should happen to be more wealthy or distinguished than the others. Then the wealthy one will get the largest quantity of attention, while the others will be kept dangling on the string for use at odd times. Such women are shrewd. Mayfair has taught them the art of conversation. They have reduced it to a science. With the innocent face of a child, they learn never to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. And, if the bare truth be stated, Claudia Nevill was one of these. She, in her shrewdness, had handled Dudley with light ribbons. She had intuitively understood what kind of woman he preferred, and she had been that woman – until now, when the bitter truth had been made plain to him.

In this life of ours the tossing between the extremes of happiness and misery are terribly wearying. When once life’s lessons begin they continue in a mad headlong rush of events. During the last few days Dudley Chisholm seemed to have lived a lifetime. Fate twisted and turned him through and round human follies and treachery. It laughed at him, beating up all that was false against all that was true in his own nature, until he found himself in such a pot-pourri of sunshine and storm that life seemed suddenly too incomprehensible to be endured.

The daintiness of women rivets and enchains men of Dudley’s stamp – the perfume of the hair, the baby-smell of the skin, the frills, the laces, the violets exuding from the chiffons, the arched foot, the neat ankle, the clinging drapery – everything, in fact, that means delicate luxury not to be enjoyed save in the company of a woman. Awkwardness disenchants, but well-poised, graceful lines, added to a chic in dress, hold for ever. To be essentially feminine places a woman in the holy of holies in a man’s heart. As Claudia was essentially feminine, she still held Dudley safe, in spite of that sudden gust of scandal.

Alone, seated in his familiar armchair, he cast aside the heavy thoughts that had so oppressed him ever since he had stood at that spot deep in rural Surrey, and looked upon the place every object of which was photographed upon his memory. He thought of Claudia, and, remembering the declaration of her love whispered in that room, felt regret at the hard words he had uttered. She had made mistakes and become entangled in the meshes of the net spread out for her. Was it not his duty to extricate her? He too had made a mistake in not paying respect, at least outwardly, to the social code, and now the time had come when he was forced to recognise that necessity. Yes, in his inner consciousness he fully realised the mistake he had made. He had all unconsciously aided and abetted her in becoming what was known as “a smart woman.”

Perhaps, however, his opinion of her would have been a different one had he been present at that moment in one of the smaller sitting-rooms of the great mansion at Albert Gate. It was a cosy apartment, with the lamplight mellowed to a half tone by the yellow shade; dull greyish blue was the colour of the silken walls, a cool, restful tint that seemed a fitting background for the cosy lounge draped with dark Egyptian red and suppressed greens and yellows.

Upon the couch, in a handsome dinner-gown of pale pink trimmed with black velvet, lazily lounged its mistress among her silken pillows, slowly waving her fan, while near her in one of the big saddle-bag chairs sat the Grand-Duke Stanislas smoking a cigarette, his eyes fixed upon her.

At his throat he wore the ribbon of St. Andrew, one of the highest of the Russian orders, the splendid diamond cross glittering upon his shirt-front. He was on his way to a reception at the Austrian Embassy given in his honour by the ambassador, but at Claudia’s invitation he had dined with her.

“No, really,” she was laughing, “it is not so in England. I quite admit that men make it a general accusation against us, as a sex, that we are ill-natured, unfair, pitiless, in judging one another. They say that when women get together, at every word a reputation dies; they say that as a savage proves his heroism by displaying in grim array the torn scalps of his enemies, so a woman thinks she proves her virtue by exhibiting the mangled reputations of her friends; they say – But there is no end to the witty impertinences and fag-ends of rhymes from Simonides to Pope, which they fling at us on this subject I have never heard men so eloquently satirical as when treating with utter scorn the idea that a woman can possibly elevate herself in the eyes of one of their sex by degrading, or suffering to be degraded, one of her own; and in their censure they are right – quite right; but wrong – quite wrong in attributing this, our worst propensity, to ill-nature and jealousy. Ignorance is the main cause: ignorance of ourselves and others.”

He laughed at her philosophy, and blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.

“I think, my dear madame, that you must be full of whims, comme disent les Anglais. A pretty woman like yourself always is,” he said in his marked foreign accent.

“And why not?” she inquired, for he had suddenly changed the channel of their conversation, and she much feared that he now intended to give her a réchauffé of his sentimental nonsense.

“Because you brought your friend to the duchess’s last night. I saw him. C’etait assez.”

“You are jealous – eh?”

“Not in the least, I assure you,” he answered quite coolly. “Only it is pretty folly on madame’s part – that is all.”

“Why folly? O la belle idée!”

“Madame’s amitiés are of course friendships,” he said, raising his dark eyebrows. “Nevertheless, she should be warned.”

“Of what?”

“Of Monsieur the Under-Secretary,” he replied, still regarding her quite calmly with his dark eyes. “For her own reputation madame should no longer be seen with him.”

She glanced at her guest quickly, for she was used to men’s jealousies. Yet surely this scion of an Imperial House could not be jealous!

“And for what reason, pray?” she asked, puzzled.

“Because of a regrettable circumstance,” he answered mysteriously. “Because of a forthcoming exposure which will be startling. In a certain Chancellerie in a certain capital of Europe there reposes a document which must shortly be made public property.”

“Well, and what then?” she asked, not yet grasping his meaning.

“Its publication will bring disgrace and ruin upon madame’s friend,” he answered simply. “That is why I warn you not to be seen again in his company.”

“What do you mean?” she cried, starting up with sudden hauteur. “You tell me this, in order to turn me from him.”

“No, ma chère, I tell you a secret which is known in the Chancellerie of a certain Power antagonistic to your country,” he responded. “I have told madame the truth for her own benefit.”

“You would try to poison my mind against Dudley Chisholm by hints such as these!” she cried, magnificent in her sudden fury. “You! – You! But let me tell you that I love him – that – that – ”

“That you refuse to believe my word!” he said, concluding her unfinished sentence.

“Yes, that I absolutely refuse to believe you!” she declared emphatically, facing him boldly in a manner which showed that her nature had revolted against this attempt to denounce the man she loved.

“C’est assez!” he laughed with an air of nonchalance the moment he had blown a cloud of smoke from his lips. “Madame has spoken!”

Chapter Fifteen.

Is told in the Grass Country

Throughout November Dudley remained in town tied to the House by his official duties, and saw little of Claudia, who had gone into Leicestershire for the hunting. Riding to hounds was her favourite sport, and she was one of the best horse-women within fifty miles of Market Harborough. Each season she went on a visit to Lady Atteridge, whose husband had a box right in the centre of the hunting-country, and at every meet she was a conspicuous figure.

An acquaintance she made in the field with the late Empress of Austria, during a run with the Pytchley across the Grafton country, ripened into a warm friendship, and on many occasions she had entertained her now lamented Majesty at Albert Gate. Nearly every year some foreign royalty or other is the centre of hunting interest. Unable to enjoy the race over the grass in their own land, they come to England for healthful sport, and generally make Harborough their headquarters. That season it was the Grand-Duke Stanislas who rode to nearly every meet, always accompanied by his equerry. Hence Claudia and he frequently met, but since that evening when he had endeavoured to turn her from the man she loved she had avoided him. She purposely refrained from attending any function at which he might possibly be present, and when they were compelled to meet with the hounds she only bowed, and seldom, if ever, offered him her hand.

On his part, he was always fussing about her, scolding her for her too reckless riding across boggy meadows, or at hedges made dangerous by barbed wires, and always holding himself prepared to render her any of those many little services which the hunting-man renders the fair sex in the field. But on her part she was absolutely indifferent to his attentions, and at the same time annoyed that he should thus publicly exhibit his admiration.

Certainly no figure was more neat and chic than hers in its well-cut habit, her dark hair tightly coiled beneath her becoming hunting-hat. In the saddle she looked as if she were part of the animal she rode, and her mare, “Tattie,” was a splendid creature, which always came in for a full share of praise among those who could tell a good hunter when they saw one. The men who ride to hounds in the Harborough country are, as a rule, hard as nails, and as keen and outspoken critics of a woman as of a horse. But Claudia Nevill and “Tattie” were both pronounced first-class, the former because she was so extremely affable with one and all, even to the farmer’s sons who followed the hounds, and blushed with a countryman’s awkwardness when she, the woman of whom the papers spoke, addressed them. There was no pride about her ladyship, and the whole countryside, from Harborough right across to Peterborough, declared her to be “one of the right sort.”

Of course even in the villages there were whispers that she was very friendly with the Grand-Duke, and the usual deductions were made from the fact that the latest foreign star in the hunting-firmament was always riding near her. But in the country the people are very slow to give credence to scandal, and the gossip, though active, was not ill-natured; besides, it had long ago been known that the Foreign Under-Secretary was passionately attached to her. Last season Chisholm had hunted with the Pytchley and had been always at her side, so that the rustics, and even the members of the hunt had come to regard him as her future husband, and had pronounced them to be a well-matched pair.