Chapter 25




BREAKING-POINT


When Diana woke the following morning it was to a drowsy sense of utter peace and content. She wondered vaguely what had given rise to it. Usually, when she came back to the waking world, it was with a shrinking almost akin to terror that a new day had begun and must be lived through--twelve empty, meaningless hours of it.

As full consciousness returned, the remembrance of yesterday's meeting with Max, and of all that had succeeded it, flashed into her mind like a sudden ray of sunlight, and she realised that what had tinged her thoughts with rose-colour was the quiet happiness, bred of her determination to return to her husband, which had lain stored at the back of her brain during the hours of unconsciousness.

She sat up in bed, vividly, joyously awake, just as her maid came in with her breakfast tray.

"Make haste, Milling," she exclaimed, a thrill of eager excitement in her voice. "It's a lovely morning, and there's so much going to happen to-day that I can't waste any time over breakfast."

It was the old, impetuous Diana who spoke, impulsively carried away by the emotion of the moment.

"Is there, madam?" Milling, arranging the breakfast things on a little table beside the bed, regarded her mistress affectionately. It was long, very long, since she had seen her with that look of happy anticipation in her face--never since the good days at Lilac Lodge, before she had quarrelled so irrevocably with her husband--and the maid wondered whether it foretokened a reconciliation. "Is there, madam? Then I'm glad it's a fine day. It's a good omen."

Diana smiled at her.

"Yes," she repeated contentedly. "It's a good omen."

Milling paused on her way out of the room.

"If you please, madam, Signor Baroni would like to know at what time you will be ready to rehearse your songs for to-night, so that he can telephone through to Miss Lermontof?"

To rehearse! Diana's face clouded suddenly. She had entirely forgotten that she had promised to give her services that night at a reception, organised in aid of some charity by the Duchess of Linfield--the shrewish old woman who had paid Diana her first tribute of tears--and the recollection of it sounded the knell to her hopes of seeing Max that day. The morning must perforce be devoted to practising, the afternoon to the necessary rest which Baroni insisted upon, and after that there would be only time to dress and partake of a light meal before she drove to the Duchess's house.

It would not be possible to see Max! Even had there been time she dared not risk the probable consequences to her voice which the strain and emotion of such an interview must necessarily carry in their train.

For a moment she felt tempted to break her engagement, to throw it over at the last instant and telephone to the Duchess to find a substitute. And then her sense of duty to her public--to the big, warm-hearted public who had always welcomed and supported her--pushed itself to the fore, forbidding her to take this way out of the difficulty.

How could she, who had never yet broken a contract when her appearance involved a big fee, fail now, on an occasion when she had consented to give her services, and when it was her name alone on the programme which had charmed so much money from the pockets of the wealthy, that not a single seat of all that could be crowded into the Duchess's rooms remained unsold? Oh, it was impossible!

Had it meant the renouncing of the biggest fee ever offered her, Diana, would have impetuously sacrificed it and flung her patrons overboard. But it meant something more than that. It was a debt of honour, her professional honour.

After all, the fulfilment of her promise to sing would only mean setting her own affairs aside for twenty-four hours, and somehow she felt that Max would understand and approve. He would never wish to snatch a few earlier hours of happiness if they must needs be purchased at the price of a broken promise. But her heart sank as she faced the only alternative.

She turned to Milling, the happy exultation that had lit her eyes suddenly quenched.

"Ask the Maestro kindly to 'phone Miss Lermontof that I shall be ready at eleven," she said quietly.

In some curious way this unlooked-for upset to her plans seemed to have cast a shadow across her path. The warm surety of coming happiness which had lapped her round receded, and a vague, indefinable apprehension invaded her consciousness. It was as though she sensed something sinister that lay in wait for her round the next corner, and all her efforts to recapture the radiant exultation of her mood of yestereve, to shake off the nervous dread that had laid hold of her, failed miserably.

Her breakfast was standing untouched on the table beside her bed. She regarded it distastefully. Then, recalling with a wry smile Baroni's dictum that "good food, and plenty of good food, means voice," she reluctantly began to eat, idly turning over the while the pages of one of the newspapers which Milling had placed beside the breakfast tray. It was an illustrated weekly, and numbered amongst its staff an enterprising young journalist, possessed of an absolute genius for nosing out such matters as the principal people concerned in them particularly desired kept secret. Those the enterprising young journalist's paper served up piping-hot in their Tattle of the Town column--a column denounced by the pilloried few and devoured with eager interest by the rest of the world.

Diana, sipping her coffee, turned to it half-heartedly, hoping to find some odd bit of news that might serve to distract her thoughts.

There were the usual sly hits at several well-known society women whose public charities covered a multitude of private sins, followed by a very inadequately veiled reference to the chief actors in a recent divorce case, and then--

Diana's eyes glued themselves to the printed page before her. Very deliberately she set down her cup on the tray beside her, and taking up the paper again, re-read the paragraph which had so suddenly riveted her attention. It ran as follows:--

"Is it true that the nom de plume of a dramatist, well-known in London circles, masks the identity of the son of a certain romantic royal duke who contracted a morganatic marriage with one of the most beautiful Englishwomen of the seventies?

"It would be curious if there proved to be a connecting link between this whisper and the recent disappearance from the stage of the popular actress who has been so closely associated with the plays emanating from the gifted pen of that same dramatist.

"Interested readers should carefully watch forthcoming events in the little state of Ruvania."

Diana stared at the newspaper incredulously, and a half-stifled exclamation broke from her.

There was--there could be--no possible doubt to whom the paragraph bore reference. "A well-known dramatist and the popular actress so closely associated with his works"--why, to any one with the most superficial knowledge of plays and players of the moment, it was as obvious as though the names had been written in capitals.

Max and Adrienne! Their identities linked together and woven into a fresh tissue of mystery and innuendo!

Diana smiled a little at the suggestion that Max might be the son of a royal duke. It was so very far-fetched--fantastic in the extreme.

And then, all at once, she remembered Olga's significant query of long ago: "Have you ever asked him who he is?" and Max's stern refusal to answer the question when she had put it to him.

At the time it had only given an additional twist to the threads of the intolerable web of mystery which had enmeshed her married life. But now it suddenly blazed out like a beacon illumining the dark places. Supposing it were true--supposing Max had been masquerading under another name all the time--then this suggestive little paragraph contained a clue from which she might perhaps unravel the whole hateful mystery.

Her brows drew together as she puzzled over the matter. This history of a morganatic marriage--it held a faint ring of familiarity. Vaguely she recollected having heard the story of some royal duke who had married an Englishwoman many years ago.

For a few minutes she racked her brain, unable to place the incident. Then, her eyes falling absently upon the newspaper once more, the last word of the paragraph suddenly unlocked the rusty door of memory.

Ruvania! She remembered the story now! There had once been a younger brother and heir of a reigning grand-duke of Ruvania who had fallen so headlong in love with a beautiful Englishwoman that he had renounced his royal state and his claims to the grand ducal throne, and had married the lady of his choice, thereafter living the life of a simple country gentleman.

The affair had taken place a good many years prior to Diana's entry into life, but at the time it had made such a romantic appeal to the sentimental heart of the world at large that it had never been quite forgotten, and had been retold in Diana's hearing on more than one occasion.

Indeed, she recollected having once seen a newspaper containing an early portrait of a family group composed of Duke Boris and his morganatic wife and children. There had been two of the latter, a boy and a girl, and Diana suddenly realised, with an irrepressible little flutter of tender excitement, that if the fantastic story hinted at in Tattle of the Town, were true, then the boy whom, years ago, she had seen pictured in the photograph must have been actually Max himself.

And--again if it were true--how naturally and easily it explained that little unconscious air of hauteur and authority that she had so often observed in him--the "lordly" air upon which she had laughingly remarked to Pobs, when describing the man who had been her companion on that memorable railway journey, when death had drawn very near them both and then had passed them by.

Her thoughts raced onward, envisaging the possibilities involved.

There were no dukes of Ruvania now; that she knew. The little State, close on the borders of Russia, had been--like so many of the smaller Eastern States--convulsed by a revolution, some ten years ago, and since then had been governed by a republic.

Was the explanation of all that had so mystified her to be found in the fact that Max was a political exile?

The Tattle of the Town paragraph practically suggested, that the affairs of the "well-known dramatist" were in some way bound up with the destiny of Ruvania. That was indicated plainly enough in the reference to "forthcoming events."

Diana's head whirled with the throng of confused ideas that poured in upon her.

And Adrienne de Gervais? What part did she play in this strange medley? Tattle of the Town assigned her one. Max and Adrienne and Ruvania were all inextricably tangled up together in the thought-provoking paragraph.

Suddenly, Diana's heart gave a great leap as a possible explanation of the whole matter sprang into her mind. There had been two children of the morganatic marriage, a son and a daughter. Was it conceivable that Adrienne de Gervais was the daughter?

Adrienne, Max's sister! That would account for his inexplicably close friendship with her, his devotion to her welfare, and--if she, like himself, were exiled--the secrecy which he had maintained.

Slowly the conviction that this was the true explanation of all that had caused her such bitter heartburning in the unhappy past grew and deepened in Diana's mind. A chill feeling of dismay crept about her heart. If it were true, then how hideously--how unforgivably--she had misjudged her husband!

She drew a sharp, agonised breath, her shaking fingers gripping the bedclothes like a frightened child's.

"Oh, not that! Don't let it be that!" she whispered piteously.

She looked round the room with scared eyes. Who could help her--tell her the truth--set at rest this new fear which had assailed her? There must be some one . . . some one. . . . Yes, there was Olga! She knew--had known Max's secret all along. But would she speak? Would she reveal the truth? Something--heaven knew what!--had kept her silent hitherto, save for the utterance of those maddening taunts and innuendoes which had so often lodged in Diana's heart and festered there.

Feverishly Diana sprang out of bed and began to dress, flinging on her clothes in a very frenzy of haste. She would see Olga, and beg, pray, beseech her, if necessary, to tell her all she knew.

If she failed, if the Russian woman obstinately denied her, she would know no peace of mind--no rest. She felt she had reached breaking-point--she could endure no more.

But she would not fail. When Olga came--and she would be here soon, very soon now--she would play up the knowledge she had gleaned from the newspaper for all it was worth, and she would force the truth from her, willing or unwilling.

Whether that truth spelt heaven, or the utter, final wrecking of all her life, she must know it.




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