CHAPTER VI
Miss Chrysie's European visit had come to an end, and she and herfather had accepted Hardress's invitation to take a trip home in the_Nadine_. Doctor Lamson was also a guest on board, and during thetrip many of the details of the great scheme were exhaustivelydiscussed. Each of the three men was going on a special mission.Clifford Vandel had definitely accepted the position of president andgeneral financial and business manager of the International MagneticControl Syndicate, as the newly-formed company had been provisionallynamed. He was going to the States to do the necessary financial partof the work, buy up rights and patents which might be necessary to thefurtherance of the scheme, and to perfect the organisation of thegreat combine of which he was president--a combine whose influence wasnow to extend not only over the United States, but over the wholeworld.
Doctor Lamson was going to make a personal study of the electricalmachinery to be found in the States, so that he might be in a positionto design the great storage works to the best advantage and with thegreatest possible economy of time and money.
Hardress, armed with introductions from the highest official sourcesin England, was going northward, after leaving his guests at New York,to Montreal, to obtain a lease of a few square miles of the desolate,ice-covered wilderness of Boothia Felix, which, as a glance at the mapwill show you, is the most northerly portion of the mainland of theAmerican continent. Further, in its scanty history, you may read thatthere Sir John Ross discovered the magnetic pole of the earth, andnamed the wilderness after his friend Sir Felix Booth, who hadfurnished most of the funds for his expedition.
His ostensible object in obtaining the lease was the foundation of anobservatory for the examination of magnetic and electrical phenomena;one of which was the possible solution of the so far unsolved riddleof the Northern Lights. He also stated to the Dominion authorities, byway of giving something like a practical air to his mission, that aremoter possibility of the scheme was the establishment of a magneticcentre for a world-wide system of wireless telegraphy.
The few square miles of ice and snow and rock were absolutelyworthless, and so the Dominion Government had not the slightesthesitation in accepting his offer of a thousand a year for ten yearsfor the exclusive use and possession of the peninsula, with right toimport materials, construct works, and do whatever might be necessaryfor the development of the scheme.
If he had not been the heir to an ancient peerage and the son of oneof the wealthiest men in England, he would probably have been lookedupon as a harmless crank who was wanting to lose his money in a vainattempt to harness the electrical energy displayed in the _Auroraborealis_ and make thunderstorms to order out of it. As it was, hewas treated indulgently as a man who had big ideas, and who wasconducting at his own expense a great scientific experiment which hecould very well afford to pay for.
Thus, after very brief negotiations, consisting of one or twointerviews, two or three dinners, and the handing over of a cheque,the Canadian Government in all innocence parted with what was soon toprove the most precious piece of land, not only on the AmericanContinent, but in the whole world.
But this was not the only concession that Shafto Hardress took back toEngland with him. For when he returned to New York and took a run upto Buffalo on the Empire State Express, with the lease of Boothia Landin his pocket, to talk matters over with President Vandel, he had abrief but momentously interesting interview with Miss Chrysie, at theclose of which she said, as her hand rested in his:
"Well, Viscount, I'm not going to say 'Yes' right away. You're agentleman, and I like you. You're going to be a peer of England someday, and, if this scheme of yours works out all right, one of themasters of the world. As my father's daughter I have no naturalobjection to being a peeress of England and mistress of the world, butI am also a natural-born woman, and I want a little more than that--Imean something that a man could not give me if he owned the SolarSystem. I want to know for certain that you love me as a man shouldlove a woman, and that I can love you as a woman should love a man ifshe is going to marry him. I like you; yes, I like you better than anyother man I've ever seen. I tell you quite honestly it hasn't been acase of love at first sight with me, and I guess I haven't known youquite long enough to give you something that I can never take back. Goto your work and do it, and while you're doing it we shall get to knoweach other better, and meanwhile you may consider that you have theoption of another piece of half-discovered territory."
Before releasing her hand he stooped and kissed it, saying, with alaugh that bespoke a certain amount of satisfaction:
"That, you know, is--well, we will call it the seal on the contract.This is my act and deed, you understand--as people say when theyconclude a contract with an option. A definition of kissing which Ionce read describes it as equivalent to syllabus."
"Syllabus!" she said, releasing her hand and raising it to her brow,pushing a fold of hair back by the motion and smiling up at him in asomewhat disconcerted fashion. "And what might that mean in yourdictionary of kisses?"
"It was defined as kissing the hand of the girl you want very badlyinstead of----"
Her red lips smiled an irresistible challenge at him, and the nextinstant his arm was round her waist, and he said:
"After all, I don't think that contract was properly signed, sealed,and delivered; at least, the seal was in the wrong place, and thedelivery was not quite complete."
"Now I call that real mean, Viscount," she said, a moment afterwards."I only gave you an option on the territory, and you're starting tooccupy it right away."
"Well, then," he said, taking her hand again, "suppose, instead of theterritory, we call it a reserve. How will that do?"
"Not quite," she said, drawing back a bit. "To some extent I've beentaken by assault, but I've not surrendered at discretion yet. Thatsounds a bit mixed, I know--but it's pretty near the truth."
"And at that," he said, gravely smiling, "I am quite content to leaveit." And so, with the magical touch of her lips still thrillingthrough his blood, he left her, more than ever determined to fulfil tothe utmost the tremendous destiny which chance had cast in his way.
To him there could have been no more delightfully satisfactory endingto his mission. In blood he was himself half-American, and in him theold-world aristocrat was strangely blended with the keen, far-seeing,quick-witted, hard-headed, and perhaps, in one sense, hard-hearted manof business. It was to this side of his nature that the physicalcharms, the keen wit, and sprightly spirit of Miss Chrysie had firstappealed; but later on the aristocrat in him had recognised that shetoo was a patrician of the New World, whose ancestry stretched backinto the history of the old, and so gradually interest and admirationhad grown into a love which completely satisfied all his instincts.
The very way in which she had received his proposal had increased bothhis love and his respect. If she had surrendered at discretion theremight have remained the possibility of a suspicion that, after all,she had been tempted to take hold of a magnificent opportunity, notonly for placing herself in the front rank of European society, butalso of wielding through her husband a power such as no woman had everexercised before. But she had given him frankly to understand thatthese things were as nothing in her eyes, great and splendid as theywere, without that certainty of mutual love which could alone induceher to give herself, body and soul, into the hands of any man, howeverpowerful or nobly born; for Chrysie Vandel was a woman in the bestsense of that much-meaning word, and she knew that for her there wasno choice, save between the complete independence of thought andaction which she had so far enjoyed, and an equally complete surrenderto the man to whom she could render, whole-hearted and unreserved, thesweet service of love.
After dinner that night he had an equally satisfactory interview withthe president, who, when he had heard his story, just got up from hischair and said:
"Viscount, we'll shake on that. My girl's free to choose where shelikes, or not to choose at all, and you are not going to have any helpfrom me in
the way of persuasion; but if she does choose, why, I'dsooner she chose you than any other man I know."
"I ask for nothing better, I can assure you," said Hardress. "Thankyou a thousand times."
And so they shook.
The next day by noon the _Nadine_ was steaming out past Sandy Hook.Allowing for difference in longitude, it was almost at the same momentthat the night mail pulled out of the Petersburg station. Two of thesleeping-compartments were occupied by Prince Xavier de Conde and hisdaughter; and so, from the ends of the earth, both travelling towardsan obscure little watering-place hidden away in the depths of theGerman forest land, were approaching each other the man and the womanwhose destinies had been, all unknown to themselves, so strangelylinked together by the last despairing act of the man whose countryhad refused to permit him to make her the mistress of the world.