The Splendid Folly Part 51

"Yes to that also. Something is going to happen there. The republic is down and out, and the last of the Mazaroffs is going to receive back the ducal crown." There was a tinge of mockery in Miss Lermontof's curt tones.

Diana gave a cry of dismay.

"Not--not Max?" she stammered. All at once, he seemed to have receded very far away from her, to have been s.n.a.t.c.hed into a world whither she would never be able to follow him.

"Max?" Olga's face darkened. "No--not Max, but Nadine Mazaroff."

"Nadine Mazaroff?" repeated Diana uncomprehendingly. "Who is Nadine Mazaroff?"

"She is the woman you knew as Adrienne de Gervais."

"Adrienne? Is that her name--Nadine Mazaroff? Then--then"--Diana's breath came unevenly--"she's not Max's sister?"

"No"--shortly. "She is--or will be within a week--the Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Ruvania."

"Go on," urged Diana, as the other paused. "Go on. Tell me everything.

I know so much already that it can't be breaking faith with any one for you to tell me the whole truth now."

Olga looked at her consideringly.

"No. I suppose, since the journalists have ferreted it out, it won't be a secret much longer," she conceded grimly. "And, in any case, it doesn't matter now. It's all settled." She sighed. "Besides"--with a faint smile--"if I tell you, it will save Max a long story when you meet."

"Yes," replied Diana, an odd expression flitting across her face. "It will save Max a long story--when we meet. Tell me," she continued, with an effort, "tell me about--Nadine Mazaroff."

"Nadine?" cried Olga, with sudden violence. "Nadine Mazaroff is the woman I hate more than any other on this earth!" Her eyes gleamed malevolently. "She stands where Max should stand. If it were not for her the Ruvanian people would have accepted him as their ruler--and overlooked his English mother. But Nadine is the legitimate heir, the child of the late Grand Duke--and Max is thrust out of the succession, because our father's marriage was a morganatic one."

"_Your_ father?"

"Yes"--with a brief smile--"I am the sister whose existence you discovered."

For a moment Diana was silent. It had never occurred to her to connect Max and Olga in any way; the latter had always seemed to her to be more or less at open enmity with him.

Immediately her heart contracted with the old haunting fear. What, then, was Adrienne to Max?

"Go on," she whispered at last, under her breath. "Go on."

"I've never forgiven my father"--Olga spoke with increasing pa.s.sion.

"For his happiness with his English wife, Max and I have paid every day of our lives! . . . As soon as I was of age, I refused the State allowance granted me as a daughter of Boris Mazaroff, and left the Ruvanian Court. Since then I've lived in England as plain Miss Lermontof, and earned my own living. Not one penny of their tainted money will I touch!"--fiercely.

"But Max--Max!" broke in Diana. "Tell me about Max!" Olga's personal quarrel with her country held no interest for a woman on the rack.

"Max?" Olga shrugged her shoulders. "Max is either a saint or a fool--G.o.d knows which! For his loyalty to the House that branded him with a stigma, and to the woman who robbed him of his heritage, has never failed."

"You mean--Adrienne?" whispered Diana, as Olga paused an instant, shaken by emotion.

"Yes, I mean Adrienne--Nadine Mazaroff. Her parents were killed in the Ruvanian revolution--butchered by the mob on the very steps of the palace. But she herself was saved by my brother. At the time the revolt broke out, he was living in Borovnitz, the capital, and he rushed off to the palace and contrived to rescue Nadine and get her away to England.

Since then, while the Royalist party have been working day and night for the restoration of the Mazaroffs, Max has watched over her safety." She paused, resuming with an accent of jealous resentment: "And it has been no easy task. German money backed the revolution, in the hope that when Ruvania grew tired of her penny-farthing republic--as she was bound to do--Germany might step in again and convert Ruvania into a little dependent State under Prussia. There's always a German princeling handy for any vacant throne!"--contemptuously--"and in the event of a big European War, Ruvania in German hands would provide an easy entrance into Russia. So you see, Nadine, alive and in safety, was a perpetual menace to the German plans. For some years she was hidden in a convent down in the West Country, not very far from Crailing, and after a while people came to believe that she, too, had perished in the revolution. It was only then that Max allowed her to emerge from the convent, and by that time she had grown from a young, unformed girl into a woman, so that there was little danger of her being recognised by any casual observer--or even by the agents of the anti-royalist party."

"Max seems to have done--a great deal--for her," said Diana, speaking slowly and rather painfully.

Olga flashed her a brief look of understanding.

"Yes," she said quietly. "He has done everything that patriotism demanded of him--even"--meaningly--"to the sacrificing of his own personal happiness. . . . It was entirely his idea that Nadine should pa.s.s as an actress. She always had dramatic talent, and when she came out of the convent he arranged that she should study for the stage. He believed that there was no safer way of concealing her ident.i.ty than by providing her with an entirely different one--and a very obvious one at that. And events have proved him right. After all, people only become suspicious when they see signs of secrecy, and there is no one more constantly in the public eye than an actress. The last place you would look for a missing grand d.u.c.h.ess is on the English stage! The very daring and publicity of the thing made it a success. No one guessed who she was, and only I, I and Carlo Baroni, knew. Oh, yes, I was sworn to secrecy"--as she read the question in Diana's eye--"and when I saw you and Max drifting apart, and knew that a word from me could set things right, I've been tempted again and again to break my oath. Thank G.o.d!"--pa.s.sionately--"Oh, thank G.o.d! I can speak now!"

She twisted her shoulders as though freed from some heavy burden.

"Yon thank G.o.d? _You_?" Diana spoke with bitter unbelief. "Why, it was you who made things a thousand times worse between us--you who goaded me into fresh suspicions. You never helped me to believe in him--although you knew the truth! You tried to part us!"

"I know. I did try," acknowledged Olga frankly. "I'd borne it all for years--watched my brother sheltering Nadine, working for her, using his genius to write plays for her--spilling all his happiness at her feet--and I couldn't endure it any longer. I thought--oh! I _prayed_ that when it came to a choice between you and Nadine he would give way--let Nadine fend for herself. And that was why I tried to anger you against him--to drive you into forcing his hand." She paused, her breast heaving tumultuously. "But the plan failed. Max remained staunch, and only his happiness came cras.h.i.+ng down about his ears instead. There is"--bleakly--"no saving saints and martyrs against their will."

A silence fell between them, and Diana made a few wavering steps towards a chair and sat down. She felt as though her legs would no longer support her.

In a mad moment, half-crazed by the new fear which the newspaper paragraph had inspired in her, she had closed the only road which might have led her back to Max. Yesterday, still unwitting of how infinitely she had wronged him, pa.s.sionately, humbly ready to give him the trust he had demanded, she might have gone to him. But to-day, her knowledge of the truth had taken from her the power to make atonement, and had raised a barrier between herself and Max which nothing in the world could ever break down.

She had failed her man in the hour of his need, and henceforth she must walk outcast in desert places.

There were still many gaps in the story to be filled in. But one thing stood out clearly from amidst the chaos which enveloped her, and that was, that she had misjudged her husband--terribly, unforgivably misjudged him.

It was loyalty, not love, that he had given Adrienne, and he had been right--a thousand times right--in refusing to reveal, even to his wife, the secret which was not his alone, and upon which hung issues of life and death and the ultimate destiny of a country--perhaps, even, of Europe itself!

It was to save his country from the Prussian claw that Max had sacrificed himself with the pure fervour of a patriot, at no matter what cost! And she, Diana, by her lack of faith, her petty jealousy, had sent him from her, had seen to it that that cost included even his happiness!

She had failed him every way--trailing the glory of love's golden raiment in the dust of the highway.

If she had but fulfilled her womanhood, what might not her unshaken faith have meant to a man fighting a battle against such bitter odds? No matter how worn with the stress of incessant watchfulness, or wearied by the strain of constant planning and the need to forestall each move of the enemy, he would have found, always waiting for him, a refuge, a quiet haven where love dwelt and where he might forget for a s.p.a.ce and be at rest. All this, which had been hers to give, she had withheld.

The silence deepened in the room. The brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, slanting in through the slats of the Venetian blinds, seemed out of place in what had suddenly become a temple of pain. Somewhere outside a robin chirruped, the cheery little sound holding, for one of the two women sitting there, a note of hitter mockery.

Suddenly Diana dropped her head on her hands with a shudder.

"Oh, G.o.d!" she whispered. "Oh, G.o.d!"

Olga leaned forward and laid a hand on her knee.

"You can go back to him now, and give him all the happiness that he has missed," she said steadily.

"Go back to him?" Diana lifted her head and stared at her with dull eyes. "Oh, no. I shan't do that."

"You won't go back?" Olga spoke slowly, as though she doubted her own hearing.

A faint, derisive smile flickered across Diana's lips. "How could I? Do you suppose that--that having failed him when he asked me to believe in him, I could go back to him now--now that I know everything? . . . Oh, no, I couldn't do that. I've nothing to offer him--now--nothing to give--neither faith nor trust, because I know the whole truth." She spoke with the quiet finality of one who can see no hope, no possibility of better things, anywhere. The words "Too late!" beat in her brain like the pendulum of a clock, maddeningly insistent.

"If only I had been content to go to him without knowing!" she went on tonelessly. "But that paragraph in the paper--it frightened me. I felt that I _must know_ if--if I had been wronging him all the time. And I had!" she ended wearily. "I had." Then, after a moment: "So you see, I can't go back to him."

"You--can't--go--back?" The words fell slowly, one by one, from Olga's lips. "Do you mean that you won't go back now--now that you know he has never failed you as you thought he had? . . . Oh!"--rapidly--"you can't mean that. You won't--you can't refuse to go back now."

Diana lifted a grey, drawn face.