“prends moy telle que je suy.”
when major white came down to breakfast at his hotel the next morning, he found the large room deserted and the windows thrown open to the sun and the garden. he was selecting a table, when a step on the verandah made him look up. standing in the window, framed, as it were, by sunshine and trees, was marguerite wade, in a white dress, with demure lips, and the complexion of a wild rose. she was the incarnation of youth—of that spring-time of life of which the sight tugs at the strings of older hearts; for surely that is the only part of life which is really and honestly worth the living.
marguerite came forward and shook hands gravely. major white's left eyebrow quivered for a moment in indication of his usual mild surprise at life and its changing surface.
“feeling pretty—bobbish?” inquired marguerite, earnestly.
white's eyebrow went right up and his glass fell.
“fairly bobbish, thank you,” he answered, looking at her with stupendous gravity.
“you look all right, you know.”
“you should never judge by appearances,” said white, with a fatherly severity.
marguerite pursed up her lips, and looked his stalwart frame up and down in silence. then she suddenly lapsed into her most confidential manner, like a schoolgirl telling her bosom friend, for the moment, all the truth and more than the truth.
“you are surprised to see me here; thought you would be, you know. i knew you were in the hotel; saw your boots outside your door last night; knew they must be yours. you went to bed very early.”
“i have two pairs of boots,” replied the major, darkly.
“well, to tell you the truth, i have brought papa across. tony wrote for him to come, and i knew papa would be no use by himself, so i came. i told you long ago that the malgamite scheme was up a gum-tree, and that seems to be precisely where you are.”
“precisely.”
“and so i have come over, and papa and i are going to put things straight.”
“i shouldn't if i were you.”
“shouldn't what?” inquired marguerite.
“shouldn't put other people's affairs straight. it does not pay, especially if other people happen to be up a gum-tree—make yourself all sticky, you know.”
marguerite looked at him doubtfully. “ah!” she said. “that's what—is it?”
“that's what,” admitted major white.
“that is the difference, i suppose, between a man and a woman,” said marguerite, sitting down at a small table where breakfast had been laid for two. “a man looks on at things going—well, to the dogs—and smokes and thinks it isn't his business. a woman thinks the whole world is her business.”
“so it is, in a sense—it is her doing, at all events.”
marguerite had turned to beckon to the waiter, and she paused to look back over her shoulder with shrewd, clear eyes.
“ah!” she said mystically.
then she addressed herself to the waiter, calling him “kellner,” and speaking to him in german, in the full assurance that it would be his native tongue.
“i have told him,” she explained to white, “to bring your little coffee-pot and your little milk-jug and your little pat of butter to this table.”
“so i understood.”
“ah! then you know german?” inquired marguerite, with another doubtful glance.
“i get two pence a day extra pay for knowing german.”
marguerite paused in her selection, of a breakfast roll from a silver basket containing that continental choice of breads which look so different and taste so much alike.
“seems to me,” she said confidentially, “that you know more than you appear to know.”
“not such a fool as i look, in fact.”
“that is about the size of it,” admitted marguerite, gravely. “tony always says that the world sees more than any one suspect. perhaps he is right.”
and both happening to look up at this moment, their glances met across the little table.
“tony often is right,” said major white.
there was a pause, during which marguerite attended to the two small coffee-pots for which she had such a youthful and outspoken contempt. the privileges of her sex were still new enough to her to afford a certain pleasure in pouring out beverages for other people to drink.
“why is tony so fond of the hague? who is mrs. vansittart?” she asked, without looking up.
major white looked stolidly out of the open window for a few minutes before answering.
“two questions don't make an answer.”
“not these two questions?” asked marguerite, with a sudden laugh.
“no; mrs. vansittart is a widow, young, and what they usually call 'charming,' i believe. she is clever, yes, very clever, and she was, i suppose, fond of vansittart; and that is the whole story, i take it.”
“not exactly a cheery story.”
“no true stories are,” returned the major, gravely.
but marguerite shook her head. in her wisdom—that huge wisdom of life as seen from the threshold—she did not believe mrs. vansittart's story.
“yes, but novelists and people take a true story and patch it up at the end. perhaps most people do that with their lives, you know; perhaps mrs. vansittart—”
“won't do that,” said the major, staring in a stupid way out of the window with vacant, short-sighted eyes. “not even if tony suggested it—which he won't do.”
“you mean that tony is not a patch upon the late mr. vansittart—that is what you mean,” said marguerite, condescendingly. “then why does he stay in the hague?”
major white shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into a stolid silence, broken only by a demand made presently by marguerite to the waiter for more bread and more butter. she looked at her companion once or twice, and it is perhaps not astonishing that she again concluded that he must be as dense as he looked. it is a mistake that many of her sex have made regarding men.
“do you know miss roden?” she asked suddenly. “i have heard a good deal about her from joan.”
“yes.”
“is she pretty?”
“yes.”
“very pretty?” persisted marguerite.
“yes,” replied the major.
and they continued their breakfast in silence.
marguerite appeared to have something to think about. major white was in the habit of stating that he never thought, and certainly appearances bore him out.
“your father is late,” he said at length.
“yes,” answered marguerite, with a gay laugh. “because he was afraid to ring the bell for hot water. papa has a rooted british conviction that continental chambermaids always burst into your room if you ring the bell, whether the door is locked or not. he is nothing if not respectable, poor old dear—would give points to any bishop in the land.”
as she spoke her father came into the room, looking, as his daughter had stated eminently british and respectable. he shook hands with major white, and seemed pleased to see him. the major was, in truth, a man after his own heart, and one whom he looked upon as solid. for mr. wade belonged to a solid generation that liked the andante of life to be played in good heavy chords, and looked with suspicious eyes upon brilliancy of execution or lightness of touch.
“i have had a note from cornish,” he said, “who suggests a meeting at this hotel this afternoon to discuss our future action. the other side has, it appears, written to lord ferriby to come over to the hague.” there had in mr. wade's life usually been that “other side,” which he had treated with a good, honest respect so long as they proved themselves worthy of it; but which he crushed the moment they forgot themselves. for there was in this british banker a vast spirit of honest, open antagonism by which he and his likes have built up a scattered empire on this planet. “at three o'clock,” he concluded, lifting the cover of a silver dish which marguerite had sent back to the kitchen awaiting her father's arrival. “and what will you do, my dear?” he said, turning to her.
“i?” replied marguerite, who always knew her own mind. “i shall take a carriage and drive down to the villa des dunes to see dorothy roden. i have a note for her from joan.”
and mr. wade turned to his breakfast with an appetite in no way diminished by the knowledge that the “other side” were about to take action.
at three o'clock the carriage was awaiting marguerite at the door of the hotel, but for some reason marguerite lingered in the porch, asking questions and absolutely refusing to drive all the way to scheveningen by the side of the “queen's canal.” when at length she turned to get in, tony cornish was coming across the toornoifeld under the trees; for the hague is the shadiest city in the world, with forest trees growing amid its great houses.
“ah!” said marguerite, holding out her hand. “you see, i have come across to give you all a leg-up. seems to me we are going to have rather a spree.”
“the spree,” replied cornish, with his light laugh, “has already begun.”
marguerite drove away towards the hague wood, and disappeared among the transparent green shadows of that wonderful forest. the man had been instructed to take her to the villa des dunes by way of the leyden road, making a round in the woods. it was at a point near the farthest outskirts of the forest that marguerite suddenly turned at the sight of a man sitting upon a bench at the roadside reading a sheet of paper.
“that,” she said to herself, “is the herr professor—but i cannot remember his name.”
marguerite was naturally a sociable person. indeed, a woman usually stops an old and half-forgotten acquaintance, while men are accustomed to let such bygones go. she told the driver to turn round and drive back again. the man upon the bench had scarce looked up as she passed. he had the air of a german, which suggestion was accentuated by the solitude of his position and the poetic surroundings which he had selected. a german, be it recorded to his credit, has a keen sense of the beauties of nature, and would rather drink his beer before a fine outlook than in a comfortable chair indoors. when marguerite returned, this man looked up again with the absorbed air of one repeating something in his mind. when he perceived that she was undoubtedly coming towards himself, he stood up and took off his hat. he was a small, square-built man, with upright hair turning to grey, and a quiet, thoughtful, clean-shaven face. his attitude, and indeed his person, dimly suggested some pictures that have been painted of the great napoleon. his measuring glance—as if the eyes were weighing the face it looked upon—distinctly suggested his great prototype.
“you do not remember me, herr professor,” said marguerite, holding out her hand with a frank laugh. “you have forgotten dresden and the chemistry classes at fr?ulein weber's?”
“no, fr?ulein; i remember those classes,” the professor answered, with a grave bow.
“and you remember the girl who dropped the sulphuric acid into the something of potassium? i nearly made a great discovery then, mein herr.”
“you nearly made the greatest discovery of all, fr?ulein. yes, i remember now—fr?ulein wade.”
“yes, i am marguerite wade,” she answered, looking at him with a little frown, “but i can't remember your name. you were always herr professor. and we never called anything by its right name in the chemistry classes, you know; that was part of the—er—trick. we called water h2 or something like that. we called you j.h.u, herr professor.”
“what does that mean, fr?ulein?”
“jolly hard up,” returned marguerite, with a laugh which suddenly gave place, with a bewildering rapidity, to a confidential gravity. “you were poor then, mein herr.”
“i have always been poor, fr?ulein, until now.”
but marguerite's mind had already flown to other things. she was looking at him again with a frown of concentration.
“i am beginning to remember your name,” she said.
“is it not strange how a name comes back with a face? and i had quite forgotten both your face and your name, herr ... herr ... von holz”—she broke off, and stepped back from him—“von holzen,” she said slowly. “then you are the malgamite man?”
“yes, fr?ulein,” he answered, with his grave smile; “i am the malgamite man.”
marguerite looked at him with a sort of wonder, for she knew enough of the malgamite scheme to realize that this was a man who ruled all that came near him, against whom her own father and tony cornish and major white and mrs. vansittart had been able to do nothing—who in face of all opposition continued calmly to make malgamite, and sell it daily to the world at a preposterous profit, and at the cost only of men's lives.
“and you, fr?ulein, are the daughter of mr. wade, the banker?”
“yes,” she answered, feeling suddenly that she was a schoolgirl again, standing before her master.
“and why are you in the hague?”
“oh,” replied marguerite, hesitating for perhaps the first time in her life, “to enlarge our minds, mein herr.” she was looking at the paper he held in his hand, and he saw the direction of her glance. in response, he laughed quietly, and held it out towards her.
“yes,” he said, “you have guessed right. it is the vorschrift, the prescription for the manufacture of malgamite.”
she took the paper and turned it over curiously. then, with her usual audacity, she opened it and began to read.
“ah,” she said, “it is in hebrew.”
von holzen nodded his head, and held out his hand for the paper, which she gave to him. she was not afraid of the man—but she was very near to fear.
“and i am sitting here, quietly under the trees, fr?ulein,” he said, “learning it by heart.”
