Читать книгу The Wrath to Come - Edward Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Presently Grant and his companion rose and moved to the Rooms, crowded now with a strange medley of people, men and women of every nationality, and speaking every tongue, differing racially but brought into a curious affinity,—the women by the great dress-makers of the world, the men by the unwritten laws of Saville Row. The corner in which they found themselves was an auspicious one and they stood for a moment or two looking on. They themselves were the objects of some attention. Gertrude, after her last season divided between London and Paris, had become recognised as a beauty of almost European fame. Her companion—Mr. Grant P. Slattery was the name upon his visiting card—had also acquaintances in most of the capitals of the world. In a way he was a good foil to the woman by whose side he stood,—a tall, good-looking young American, a little slimmer than the usual type, looking somewhat older than his thirty years, perhaps because of a certain travelled air, a quiet assurance born of his brief but successful diplomatic career in three of the great capitals.

"My adopted country people are back again in force," Gertrude remarked.

"They interest me more than any other people here," Grant confessed. "It is as though the nation had changed its type."

"Explain yourself, please," she invited.

"I must speak frankly if I do," he warned her.

"As frankly as you please. I hold no brief for my husband's country people. I like some of them and hate others."

"Well, then," he continued, "it seems to me that the women are no longer blowsy and florid and over-dressed, the men no longer push their way and swagger. Somehow or other the women have learnt how to dress and the men have acquired manners. They are not in the least like the travelling Germans of say thirty years ago—just before the war."

"They are feeling their way," she remarked cynically.

He looked down at her with the air of one who has listened to wise words. In reality, it was he who was feeling his way.

"I am not so sure," he reflected. "I wonder sometimes whether the whole nation has not changed, whether the war did not purge them of their boastfulness and conceit, whether this present generation has not acquired a different and a less offensive outlook."

"Do you really believe that?" she asked.

"I am simply speculating," he answered. "To begin with there is a great change in your aristocracy. Young Prince Frederick, for instance. Every one says that he has modelled himself exactly upon what the present King Edward VIII of England was like when he was a lad of twenty. All the older statesmen tell us that he was the most popular young man in the civilised world, modest, democratic, charming. These are not Teutonic qualities, you know, but your Prince Frederick is certainly developing them."

"I wonder," she murmured.

"Tell me, what is your own attitude towards your husband's country people?" he went on, almost bluntly. "Do you like them or don't you? And, more important still, do you believe in them or don't you?"

She looked around her a little nervously. The Rooms were thronged with people but the corner in which they were standing was still almost isolated.

"My friend," she confided, "I am a simple woman and not a psychologist. I live amongst the German people. I do not dislike them as I am sure I should have disliked the Germans of thirty years ago, but I do not understand them. You must remember that of the Germans who made their country the most hated in the world before the war of nineteen-fourteen, I naturally knew nothing. I wasn't even born when the Peace of Versailles was signed. The German of those days is, so far as I am concerned, as extinct as the dodo!"

"If he is not extinct," Grant said, "he is at least not in the limelight."

"He has perhaps learnt to wear the sheep's clothing," she suggested. "You will not be able to induce me to say one word either for or against these people whom I confess that I do not understand. If you would really like to know all about them," she went on, "shall we ask the one man who ought to know? Have you ever met Prince Lutrecht?"

"Never," Grant replied. "I know of him, of course, and I have heard Lord Yeovil speak of him several times lately. They meet most days, of course, at Nice."

"I shall present you," she promised. "You will find him a most interesting and delightful man, and, if my husband is to be believed, it is he who, for the next generation, will decide the destinies of his country."

"It will give me great pleasure to meet him," Grant assured her. "He was not in office when I was in Berlin but I remember being told he had a great dislike to America and Americans."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"His father was of the Hohenzollern regime," she remarked, "and the Republican Government of to-day is a bitter pill for the aristocracy of a score of generations. He seems to be alone just now. Wait until I call you."

She crossed the room and was welcomed cordially by a tall, exceedingly aristocratic-looking man, apparently about sixty years of age, dressed with the utmost care, handsome and with a charming smile. A moment or two later he made his way with Gertrude by his side to where Grant was standing. He brushed aside Gertrude's formal introduction.

"I had interests in the Foreign Office at Berlin when Mr. Slattery was at the American Embassy," he said. "I remember him quite well. I regret very much to hear that you have left the Service, Mr. Slattery. We need all the help we can get nowadays from Americans of your status and culture."

"Germany has shown lately that she needs no help from any one, sir," Grant replied.

The Prince smiled gravely.

"You are very kind. There is no power on earth which could hinder the German people from attaining to their destiny. But we need understanding and we need sympathy. We are not always represented to our friends as we would wish. I hope that I shall see more of you in Monte Carlo, Mr. Slattery. I am staying at the Villa Monaco and shall be glad to receive your visit. I am usually to be found at home, at any time when the Congress at Nice is not sitting."

He passed on, with a low bow and a whispered farewell to Gertrude, leaving in Grant's mind a curious impression of unfriendliness, for which he could not in the least account. Even his civility had seemed unnatural.

"They say that he is to be our next President," Gertrude confided.

Her companion watched the Prince thoughtfully as the latter paused to accept the greetings of a friend.

"I don't think I ever met a man who looked so ill-fitted to be the President of a great democracy," he remarked drily.

"Could you think of a more suitable post for him?"

He nodded.

"I could more easily imagine him the Mephistophelian chancellor of an autocrat."

"Back in the Hohenzollern days?"

"Or in the days which may be in store for us," he replied.

She looked into the baccarat room.

"An empty place at my favourite table!" she exclaimed. "Call on me early to-morrow, Grant, and we'll plan something. Forgive my hurrying. I can't afford to miss this."

He watched her pass into the outer room and seat herself contentedly in the vacant place. Then he strolled from table to table, risking a louis now and then, but scarcely waiting to see the result. A spirit of restlessness pursued him. He stood aloof for some minutes, watching Gertrude immersed in the baccarat. Then he wandered into the Bar, where Susan Yeovil presently found him. She sank into a chair by his side.

"Broke!" she announced ruefully, turning her little handbag inside out. "Not a louis left, and the others won't be ready to go home for an hour yet."

"Can I be of any assistance?" he ventured.

She shook her head.

"I've been too nicely brought up. I couldn't possibly borrow money from you. Tell me about the beautiful lady."

"She was very well known three or four years ago in Washington as Gertrude Butler," Grant confided. "She is the woman to whom I was engaged and who married Prince Otto von Diss."

She was instantly grave.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed. "How horrid for you meeting her like that. Did you mind much?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I was asking myself that question as you came up. I have never been able to analyse exactly my feeling for her, either during those days of our engagement or since. I was very much in love with her, if that counts for anything."

"It doesn't," she assured him. "Being in love is just a spring disease. I fancied myself in love with Bobby before I heard of him advertising himself with that Russian lady in Nice. Six sets of tennis this afternoon, three éclairs and the cocktail you are going to give me presently have completely cured me."

"Fancy intruding your own experiences in such a serious matter! You are only a child," he reminded her with a smile.

"I'm nineteen," she retorted. "Surely that is old enough for anything. I am of age for the great passion itself, if only it would arrive, and arrive quickly. I believe I heard that croupier call out number fourteen. I know I shall end by besmirching my good name and borrowing a louis from you."

He laid a handful of notes upon the table beside them. She shook her head again.

"Don't tempt me," she begged. "Besides, I think I would rather talk. I am interested in the Princess. Tell me just how you are feeling about her."

"I couldn't," he confessed.

"Is she here without her husband?"

"Yes."

"Cat! Of course she's come to flirt with you."

"I don't think so. I think she has come here with an altogether different purpose."

"What purpose?"

He smiled at her with affected tolerance.

"After all, you know," he said, "young people shouldn't be too curious."

She drew away from him petulantly.

"I wonder," she complained, "why you always persist in treating me as though I were a child."

"Well, aren't you?" he rejoined. "Nineteen isn't very old, you know."

"Anyway, if father can tell me things," she argued, "I don't see why you should be so secretive."

"What does your father tell you?"

"Nothing that I am going to repeat to you, Mr. Inquisitor. I will tell you this, though," she went on, dropping her voice a little. "He isn't at all happy about the way things are going over at Nice. Did you know that it was he who insisted upon sittings being suspended for a day, and that he and Arthur sent no less than twenty cables away last night."

"Yes, I knew," he admitted, "but I had no idea that you did."

She permitted herself a friendly little grimace.

"I only mentioned it just to show that every one doesn't ignore me as you do," she observed. "Here's Arthur. He's having a day off, isn't he?"

The young man came up and displayed a handful of plaques. He was good-looking in a pale, rather tired way.

"Why do I slave for your father, Lady Susan," he demanded, "for a vulgar pittance, when there are thousands to be picked up here without the slightest effort?"

"Vulgar pittance!" she scoffed. "I'm sure Dad, or rather the country, pays you quite as much as you're worth. Besides, look at the number of free meals you get!"

"This to the private secretary of a Prime Minister!" the young man groaned. "Why, my dear child—"

"I'm nobody's 'dear child'!" she interrupted. "I am 'Lady Susan' to you two men, except perhaps after a dance, or in the moonlight, or on the river, when I feel yielding and let either of you call me 'Susan.' Please, get it into your heads that I am nobody's 'child.' In this age of flappers, nineteen is almost passé. I could be married to-morrow if I chose."

"Heaven forbid!" Arthur exclaimed. "At any rate unless it were to me."

"You'd have to change considerably before I'd marry either of you," she declared. "If you've won all those plaques, you can lend me one. You can get it out of Father to-night."

"And you refused to borrow from me," Grant said reproachfully.

"Well, you see Arthur is one of the household," she explained, "and I don't feel the same way about him. Besides, I shall probably repay him in ten minutes. I feel that my luck is in."

She strolled off. The Honourable Arthur Lymane sank into her vacant place.

"You're coming up to-night, Slattery?"

"I'm dining."

"The Chief wants to see you particularly," Lymane confided, dropping his voice. "He's already cabled to Washington. There's a damned funny atmosphere about the proceedings at Nice this time. Nothing that amounts to anything without doubt, but every one seems to be so jolly mysterious."

"Is that so?" Grant murmured.

"The Chief took the bull by the horns yesterday when he suspended sittings for twenty-four hours. It gives us a breathing spell, anyway."

"Have you any idea what's at the bottom of it all?" Grant asked.

His companion shook his head.

"The Chief will talk to you to-night. He may be more communicative with you than he has been with me. By Jove! Grant, old fellow!" he exclaimed, his tone suddenly changing to one of wondering admiration. "There's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Coming straight at us, too."

The young man had already risen to his feet as though about to take his departure, but, as Gertrude crossed the room towards them, he remained transfixed, watching her. His look was no ordinary stare. The admiration it expressed was, in its way, too subtle and too involuntary.

"She's coming straight at us," he repeated, in an agitated whisper. "For heaven's sake, if you know her, Slattery, present me."

Gertrude, smiling, came towards them. She seemed already to appreciate the situation. Grant rose to his feet.

"Congratulate me!" she exclaimed. "I've won thirty thousand francs."

"Come and celebrate with us," Grant invited, drawing up a chair for her. "Let me present my friend, Mr. Arthur Lymane—the Princess von Diss."