The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim (books to read now txt) 📕

to remain for a few days in Berlin, and I was therefore compelled to present myself at Potsdam. There I received a great surprise. Wilhelm spoke to me of you, and though, alas! my heart is still bruised, he helped me to understand.”

“Is this wise?” he asked a little desperately.

She ignored his words.

“I was taken back into favour at Court,” she went on. “For that I owe to you my thanks. Wilhelm was much impressed by your recent visit to him, and by the way in which you have established yourself here. He spoke also with warm commendation of your labours in Africa, which he seemed to appreciate all the more as you were sent there an exile. He asked me, Leopold,” she added, dropping her voice a little, “if my feelings towards you remained unchanged.”

Dominey’s face remained unrelaxed. Persistently he refused the challenge of her eyes.

“I told him the truth,” she proceeded. “I told him how it all began, and how it must last with me⁠—to the end. We spoke even of the duel. I told him what both your seconds had explained to me⁠—that turn of the wrist, Conrad’s wild lunge, how he literally threw himself upon the point of your sword. Wilhelm understands and forgives, and he has sent you this letter.”

She drew a small grey envelope from her pocket. On the seal were the Imperial Hohenzollern arms. She passed it to him.

“Leopold,” she whispered, “please read that.”

He shook his head, although he accepted the letter with reluctant fingers.

“Read the superscription,” she directed.

He obeyed her. It was addressed in a strange, straggling handwriting to Sir Everard Dominey, Baronet. He broke the seal unwillingly and drew out the letter. It was dated barely a fortnight back. There was neither beginning or ending; just a couple of sentences scrawled across the thick notepaper:

It is my will that you offer your hand in marriage to the Princess Stephanie of Eiderstrom. Your union shall be blessed by the Church and approved by my Court.

Wilhelm.

Dominey sat as a man enthralled with silence. She watched him.

“Not on your knees yet?” she asked, with faint but somewhat resentful irony. “Can it be, Leopold, that you have lost your love for me? You have changed so much and in so many ways. Has the love gone?”

Even to himself his voice sounded harsh and unnatural, his words instinct with the graceless cruelty of a clown.

“This is not practical,” he declared. “Think! I am as I have been addressed here, and as I must remain yet for months to come⁠—Everard Dominey, an Englishman and the owner of this house⁠—the husband of Lady Dominey.”

“Where is your reputed wife?” Stephanie demanded, frowning.

“In the nursing home where she has been for the last few months,” he replied. “She has already practically recovered. She cannot remain there much longer.”

“You must insist upon it that she does.”

“I ask you to consider the suspicions which would be excited by such a course,” Dominey pleaded earnestly, “and further, can you explain to me in what way I, having already, according to belief of everybody, another wife living, can take advantage of this mandate?”

She looked at him wonderingly.

“You make difficulties? You sit there like the cold Englishman whose place you are taking, you whose tears have fallen before now upon my hand, whose lips⁠—”

“You speak of one who is dead,” Dominey interrupted, “dead until the coming of great events may bring him to life again. Until that time your lover must be dumb.”

Then her anger blazed out. She spoke incoherently, passionately, dragged his face down to hers and clenched her fist the next moment as though she would have struck it. She broke down with a storm of tears.

“Not so hard⁠—not so hard, Leopold!” she implored. “Oh! yours is a great task, and you must carry it through to the end, but we have his permission⁠—there can be found a way⁠—we could be married secretly. At least your lips⁠—your arms! My heart is starved, Leopold.”

He rose to his feet. Her arms were still twined about his neck, her lips hungry for his kisses, her eyes shining up into his.

“Have pity on me, Stephanie,” he begged. “Until our time has come there is dishonour even in a single kiss. Wait for the day, the day you know of.”

She unwound her arms and shivered slightly. Her hurt eyes regarded him wonderingly.

“Leopold,” she faltered, “what has changed you like this? What has dried up all the passion in you? You are a different man. Let me look at you.”

She caught him by the shoulders, dragged him underneath the electric globe, and stood there gazing into his face. The great log upon the hearth was spluttering and fizzing. Through the closed door came the faint wave of conversation and laughter from outside. Her breathing was uneven, her eyes were seeking to rend the mask from his face.

“Can you have learnt to care for anyone else?” she muttered. “There were no women in Africa. This Rosamund Dominey, your reputed wife⁠—they tell me that she is beautiful, that you have been kindness itself to her, that her health has improved since your coming, that she adores you. You wouldn’t dare⁠—”

“No,” he interrupted, “I should not dare.”

“Then what are you looking at?” she demanded. “Tell me that?”

Her eyes were following the shadowed picture which had passed out of the room. He saw once more the slight, girlish form, the love-seeking light in those pleading dark eyes, the tremulous lips, the whole sweet appeal for safety from a frightened child to him, the strong man. He felt the clinging touch of those soft fingers laid upon his, the sweetness of those marvellously awakened emotions, so cruelly and drearily stifled through a cycle of years. The woman’s passion by his side seemed suddenly tawdry and unreal, the seeking of her lips for his something horrible. His back was towards the door, and it was her cry of angry dismay which first apprised him of a welcome intruder. He swung around