"What felicitous phrases!"
"Sarcasm! That surely means--convalescence."
"You have been ill then, monsieur;" Aksakoff addressed the colouring young gentleman.
"Heart-disease," flashed Lady Jim, gaily--"Ah, M. Demetrius!"--and so did her ex-lover out of a retort. "You know Miss Tallentire--Mr. Askew; they were at Firmingham, if you remember. And M. Aksakoff, who will doubtless recall Dr. Demetrius."
"Say Prince Constantine Demetrius, madame.
"You place me too high," said the doctor, bowing stiffly. "Out of Russia I am but a simple physician."
"And a remarkably clever one, according to this lady."
"Madame flatters. I failed, where I should have succeeded."
Leah murmured a sharp aside, reproving the professional humility which necessitated an allusion to her loss. A bowing waiter entered before the doctor's apologetic shrug could be followed by words.
"Madame is served," said the waiter, and the lift lowered five hungry people to the dining-room.
Says a disciple of Brillat-Savarin, with solemn truth and the infallible judgment of experience, "Breakfast in Scotland, lunch in America, and dine in Paris." Circumstances prevented Lady Jim from dispensing Boston hospitality, but having supervised the ideas of the Henri-Trois chef, she placed a very dainty and tempting repast before a quartette almost too hungry to be critical. Nor was wanting wine, chosen with masculine discretion, to loosen rusty tongues and release fair thoughts embedded in slow brains. But this latter adjective must be taken--very appropriately at table--with a grain of salt. None of those who ate and drank were dull; three of them, indeed, were much too clever, and the remaining two made up in sparkle what they lacked in depth. Many good things were eaten and said during that merry meal, and the corner near the large window bubbled with laughter. Leah, watching stealthily the courtesy of Aksakoff and his fellow-countryman, shivered internally at the irony of circumstances. Paris--Havre--Kronstadt--Siberia: the four names repeated themselves dolorously in her brain like a street cry. What wonder, then, that the spectacle of this tragic comedy made her laugh and babble, and smile and nod, and play to perfection the rôle of an attentive hostess. She was quite glad that what would prove in all probability to be her victim's last civilised meal was appetising. Aksakoff professed himself charmed with her esprit. Here, thought he, were the makings of an ideal conspirator, and he regretted her nationality. The Anglo-Saxon nature is so alien to working mole-fashion. Yet, had he only known the truth, Lady Jim had already proved her willingness to conspire, if not against a throne, at least for the cheating of a limited company.
The luncheon was thus pleasant, and not less so the digestive hour, when the repleted guests assembled in the sitting-room. Anxious to afford the diplomatist every assistance, Lady Jim gathered the young people under her wing near the piano at the far end of the apartment. Joan, who had more of a soul than a memory for music, played scraps, chatting to right and left while her nimble fingers ran from Mozart to Chopin and attempted what their owner remembered of Wagner's creations. Thus the Muscovites, smoking by special permission, were enabled to exchange views in comparative privacy. To assure complete secrecy, and with the hole-and-corner instinct of the Slav, they talked Russian with a bluntness strangely opposed to Lady Jim's elusive suggestiveness. The situation--to Demetrius, at least--did not admit of sugared phrases or ambiguous explanations.
"Madame yonder"--he nodded towards Leah--"told you why I desired this interview."
"Yes!"--Aksakoff handled his cigarette daintily--"but an explanation from you is necessary."
Demetrius nodded brusquely. "I must mention the name of your daughter."
"Without doubt, since her welfare is the main object of our meeting."
"Mademoiselle Aksakoff," said Demetrius, coldly, "has done me the honour to admire me. But that my affections are already engaged, I should certainly reciprocate."
"You allude to Mademoiselle Ninette?"
A look of surprise flitted across the other's face. "The actress? Why should you think so?"
"Rumour credits you with being her lover."
"And, as usual, rumour is wrong. Mademoiselle Ninette was assuredly my patient, but I received my fees in gold, not in kisses. As poor Dr. Demetrius I I cannot live on love, Ivan Aksakoff."
"Prince Constantine will be able to do so with the lady he mentions."
"I mentioned no lady."
"Ah, pardon!" Aksakoff was foiled. "You accept my apology?"
"None is needed. I intended to tell you the name of the lady, Ivan Aksakoff; it is madame yonder."
With uplifted eyebrows the diplomatist glanced in the direction of Leah.
"I heard something in London clubs of your admiration for her, Constantine Demetrius; even before her husband died it was said that you had laid yourself at her feet. What a pity you cannot marry her! An ideal match, my friend; quite ideal, and so useful in promoting a social understanding between Holy Russia and these islanders."
"We marry in a year," announced the doctor, calmly.
"Ah, no; but pardon me, it is impossible!" Aksakoff, really and truly startled, dropped his cigarette. That haughty Lady James Kaimes should---- "It is quite impossible," said he, staring.
"I refer you to the lady herself," insisted Demetrius.
"A-a-a-h!" droned the other, picking up his cigarette to place it in the ash-tray, and lighting another; "y-e-s!" He stared again at his companion, then stole a glance at Leah. Apparently her desire to assist Muscovite politics was not entirely a question of pounds, shillings, and pence. She was less sordid and more subtle than he had guessed.
Demetrius, giving him no time to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, went on with his explanation. "You will, therefore, understand that my marriage with your daughter is out of the question."
"Of course," assented Aksakoff, absently, and wondering why Lady Jim engaged herself to this exile. "Of course," he added more briskly, "I trust you will permit me to announce this engagement to my daughter."
"Certainly. It will show her that----"
"That you are unworthy of her hand," ended Aksakoff, sharply, for here the father overleaped the diplomatist.
"Quite so, Ivan Aksakoff, and I hope soon to congratulate the Countess Petrovitch."
"You are too good, Constantine Demetrius." "In return for thus arranging your domestic affairs," continued the doctor, unmoved by the sarcasm, "will you gain my pardon from the Czar? Can you gain it?" he asked with emphasis.
"I can and will."
"My title, my money----"
"Both shall be restored. And of course," added Aksakoff, with a keen glance, "you will no longer work in what you term the sacred cause of humanity."
Demetrius waved his hand gloomily. "Dreams of youth--desires for the impossible. I am aware," he added bitterly, "that individuality in a bureaucratic administration is looked upon as a crime."
"Can you wonder at it? If one wheel refuses to fit in with another, the machine will not work. We are all parts of a mighty engine----"
"Which crushes the poor and the weak."
"What matter, since you, Constantine Demetrius, are neither poor nor weak?"
"My sympathy----"
"A most dangerous word, current only in that Utopia you dreamed of. It is not in the Russian dictionary."
Demetrius turned on the scoffer a glittering eye. "It will be, some day," said he, slowly.
"My friend"--Aksakoff shook the ash from his cigarette--"if you propose to edit dictionaries you must remain Dr. Demetrius--in exile."
"I gladly would," rejoined the other, heartily; "only----" His voice died away, as he looked towards Lady Jim.
The diplomatist laughed. "There is always a woman. Ah, these dear ladies, how practical they are! In their hands we are wax, which they mould after the honey is squeezed out;" he laughed again, then resumed, business-like: "You will write to my daughter and place the truth of this engagement beyond question."
"To-morrow, Ivan Aksakoff, when I am in London. And needless to say, I shall always profoundly respect Mademoiselle your daughter."
"You mean the Countess Petrovitch."
"If you can so far bend her to your ambition," retorted Demetrius. "You promise, then, to right me with the Czar?"
Aksakoff nodded and laughed cynically. "You are already Prince Constantine Demetrius, rich, honoured, and--unsympathetic." The doctor winced at the last word, but shook hands on the agreement. Lady Jim glanced across the room with Judas and his kiss in her mind. That the cap fitted her, also, she did not consider for the moment.
"Coffee! Coffee!" cried the pianist, rising. "Just what I want."
"It is tea on this occasion," replied Leah, and went over to take charge of the tray brought in by a smiling waiter.
"Tea?" Joan echoed the word in an amazed voice, and tripped like a fairy towards a comfortable low chair. "Who ever heard of tea in the middle of the day?"
"Australian colonists in the back blocks," explained Askew, sauntering to assist in arranging a harlequin set of cups. "They drink tea at all hours."
"In Russia, also," remarked Lady Jim, jingling the saucers. "This is a concession to the prejudices of our foreign guests;" and she laughed amiably at the Muscovites.
Demetrius bowed and smiled, twisting his waxed moustache with admiring glances at Leah's red hair. He was far from suspecting a snare, and that Aksakoff should have a finger and thumb in his waistcoat-pocket did not seem remarkable. But Lady Jim--nervously on the alert--guessed that the diplomatist was fiddling with something of a narcotic nature. Also, his significant glance at her, at the teacups, at Demetrius, hinted at her duty. She fulfilled it with a spasm of fear, well masked by frivolity.
"Joan, I have dropped my handkerchief--near the piano, I think. Will you please look for it?"
Miss Tallentire rose, to be anticipated, as Leah guessed she would be, by two attentive gentlemen. "Allow me!" "Permit me, mademoiselle!" and with Askew, Demetrius crossed for the search, while Lady Jim ran on lightly:
"It might be on the floor near you, Joan. What a nuisance! How stupid of me!"
Then Joan looked on the carpet--Leah also, the latter straining her ears to hear the almost inaudible. The faint tinkle of a pellet dropped into a cup sounded to her guilty soul like a clap of thunder.
"Here it is," cried Joan, fishing under the table, and picking up what Lady Jim had purposely dropped.
"Thanks awfully, dear. Mr. Askew, M. Demetrius, do not trouble. Give me the teapot, Joan. Ah!" she babbled on, while filling the cups--"What a pity we have not glasses, so that you could drink the tea in your own fashion, M. Demetrius. M. Aksakoff, we did so enjoy the novelty at your Monte Carlo villa. Still, here is a lemon; slice it, Joan, dear. Do sit down, doctor. M. Aksakoff, you can be waiter."
"Allow me," cried Askew, half rising.
"Sit where you are," said Leah, sharply; "you'll upset the table. M. Aksakoff!"
"With pleasure, madame;" and he obliged her with stiff cordiality.
Leah wiped her lips, which were dry, and stole a stealthy glance at the cup which he handed to the doctor. It was of a deep blue colour. "Augh!" she breathed, as he set it to his lips.
"You are wearied with your duties, madame," conjectured Aksakoff, sipping with gusto; "and I, alas, can relieve you only by acting as waiter."
"You are a guest now," she rejoined, with a nervous laugh; "is the tea to your liking?"
"Most delightful tea," said Demetrius, courteously.
"You compliment the decoction too highly. Tea on the Continent is like rain in the Sahara. I except Russia, of course," she ended, smiling.
"You will find us English in many ways, when you visit Moscow, madame."
Leah looked inquisitively at Aksakoff, who spoke, guessing that he was in possession of the truth, and wondering what he thought of the engagement. The man's face betrayed nothing, however, and her gaze travelled to Demetrius. He was sitting perfectly still, and his eyes looked dull, as though the fire of life was dwindling within. Meeting her smile, he roused himself with a jerk and an apology.
"I feel sleepy--the heat, no doubt," he murmured.
"I can't say that I feel scorching," said Askew, glancing through the window at a grey sky.
"You are used to the tropics; M. Demetrius is not," observed Aksakoff.
Joan laughed. "You remind me of a horrid story my brother told me. An old Anglo-Indian was being cremated at Woking, and said that it was the first time he had felt warm in England."
"A horrid story indeed," murmured Lady Jim, with her eyes on the expressionless face of Demetrius. "You shouldn't tell it, dear." Then she rose hurriedly: "Are you quite well, M. Demetrius?"
"Oh yes--quite;" the doctor's voice droned into an inarticulate mumble and his head fell forward.
"Oh! Mr. Askew--M. Aksakoff--what it the matter? His eyes are closed; his breathing--just listen!"
"Kind of fit, perhaps," said Askew, rising to shake Demetrius, and so extorted a cry from the kind-hearted hostess.
"Don't--the man is ill! Oh, how dreadful! Loosen his collar--open the window. I wonder if he needs a doctor," and she stepped to the electric button of the bell.
"There might be one in the hotel," said Aksakoff, as Joan and Askew obeyed her directions. And from the tone of his voice she knew that there was one in the hotel. "It really seems to be a kind of fit," said Aksakoff, looking at the now unconscious man. "Yet he appeared to be quite well a few minutes ago."
Leah did not hear. She was already at the door issuing hurried instructions to a waiter, whose smile had vanished. When she came back the two men had placed Demetrius on the sofa, where he lay breathing heavily, his face white and his lips purple; not a pleasant sight by any means, as Askew thought.
"Had not you ladies better retire?" he suggested.
"No, no!" they cried in one breath. "We must help."
"Only the doctor can do that--if there is one," said Aksakoff, observing his handiwork on the sofa with a critical eye.
Then, at the tail of a triple rap, entered the fat proprietor of the Henri Trois, scared in looks and importantly fussy in manner. Behind him glided a spick-and-span man, not unlike Demetrius, and unmistakably Tartar.
"Dr. Helfmann happened to be luncheoning," explained M. Gravier, "fortunately. What is the matter, madame?"
Helfmann soon explained that. He felt the pulse of the patient, laid a gentle hand on a weakly-beating heart, and turned up the purple eyelids. Askew and Aksakoff stood aside with the proprietor. Lady Jim and Joan bent forward with pale faces and clasped hands, anxious for the verdict.
"A kind of fit," explained the doctor; "he will be insensible for two--three hours."
"In my hotel? Ach!--the scandal!" cried Gravier, spreading his fat hands in dismay.
"Is it really a fit?" asked Lady Jim, paying no attention.
"Madame"--the doctor faced her coldly--"to speak technically would not enlighten you. I can bring this gentleman back to his senses; but I think--with your permission," added he, bowing, "that if you will permit me to take him in a cab to a chemist's shop where I can procure the drug I require, it will save time. And in this case"--he glanced calmly at the unconscious man--"time means life."
"Ugh!" said Askew. "Take him away at once."
"If you think it is better," murmured Lady Jim, not daring to meet the victorious eye of the diplomatist.
"Of course," rejoined Askew, brusquely. "You and Miss Tallentire can do nothing, and the sight is not a pleasant one."
"Joan;" Lady Jim drew the girl away, and passed with her into the bedroom adjoining. There behind a closed door they listened to the sound of a body being removed. The scraping of feet, the heavy breathing of ladened men, the bumping and humping of something soft (horrible suggestion)--they could hear these intimations of removal very plainly. Leah sat on the bed with tightly clasped hands between slack knees. "Augh!" said Leah.
"It is all right, Lady James," said Joan, petting her. "Poor M. Demetrius will soon be all right. I wonder what made him ill?"
"I wonder," echoed Lady Jim, and wondered very truly. She could not understand what drug Aksakoff had used to reduce Demetrius so rapidly to unconsciousness. And not another word was spoken for ten minutes.
"They have driven away in a fiacre," announced Miss Tallentire, from the window.
"Who have driven?"
"That doctor and M. Demetrius."
"Not M. Aksakoff?"
Before her question could be answered a sharp knock came to the door, and Aksakoff presented himself when it was opened.
"All is well, dear ladies," said he, blandly. "Dr. Helfmann has gone with our sick friend. Mr. Askew follows to see that all is well."
"Askew follows?" said Lady Jim, with a sharp glance; "but why----?"
The diplomatist still smiled. "He has a kind heart, that young Mr. Askew, and so----" he shrugged, then bowed to Joan. "I compliment you, mademoiselle, on your courage. You also, madame. And now, all being well, I must take my leave;" he kissed Lady Jim's hand. "I shall see you again in London, as to-night I journey to Havre."
He went out, and Leah again heard four names as though a ghostly porter was calling them at a ghostly junction.
"Paris, Havre, Kronstadt, Siberia," said the ghostly porter.
"Ugh!" said Lady Jim.
Joan was less surprised than a better informed lady when no word of the sick man's progress came to hand. Aksakoff was presumably at Havre, and Askew, having missed the fiacre, and called uselessly at a chemist's shop indicated by Helfmann, clamoured for information. Unacquainted with the address of Demetrius, no information could be given by Lady Jim; but she proffered a suggestion to keep the budding philanthropist quiet.
"He might be in an hospital."
"He might! Ill go the round."
"Do!" she assented cordially, and quite easy in her mind about this needle-in-a-haystack search.
So Askew, wisely acting immediately on an impulse that could not last, set forth on his quest, only to drift across the path of an old shipmate. The meeting led to cocktails at the American Bar, and the consumption of these involved the calling-up of a past, which made the ex-navy man long to nose the out-trail once more. That his friend who did business in great waters should know of a clean-built schooner-yacht for sale at a ridiculously low price was natural. And equally natural was Askew's determination to cross the Channel that very day, lest the desirable vessel should be snapped up. Thus it came about that he presented himself to Leah, prior to an immediate departure, without recurring to the quest. Lady Jim, however, could not forbear a taunt.
"And your philanthropic search?" she inquired.
Askew coloured, laughed, and shrugged.
"Demetrius is no kith or kin of mine," was his excuse, "and wouldn't do as much for me, I doubt. 'Sides, he's probably on his legs by now, and will come skipping along to see you."
"If he does I shall advise him of your charity."
"No, don't," urged the youth, coolly. "He'll be giving me a testimonial."
Leah laughed good-humouredly. "Well, good-bye," and she shook hands. "Thanks for your company. Joan has enjoyed it immensely."
"And you?"
"Ah!" with a sigh and a twinkle, "think what I have lost."
"Meaning me?"
"Meaning you, man of lightning moods. Philanthropy, love--ten minutes of each. Shall I see you in London?"
"Oh--er--yes. But if I can annex this schooner at a fair price, I'm thinking of a cruise."
"In Pacific waters?"
He grew red and uneasy, shifting from one foot to the other. "I might."
"That means, you will. H'm! The first case I ever knew of a man being off with the new love and on with the old. But"--she held up a finger--"I claim a visit before you go."
Askew seized her hand. "I promise!" Then, coaxingly: "We are friends!"
"Parting friends, and I have already shaken hands with you twice.Au revoir, till Curzon Street," and nodding him God-speed, she retired to consider possibilities of preventing a speedy departure. Poor woman! No sooner had she cleared away one obstacle than another bulked in the path. And these, unfortunately, she could not leap over or go round. They had to be removed by toilsome pick-and-shovel work.
"What a mercy Demetrius is disposed of!" said Lady Jim, to her mirror. "Two new wrinkles. I shan't give that silly boy the chance of adding a third."
On the morning of departure from Paris Leah received a letter from Demetrius, which she showed to Joan, almost as soon as the train steamed out of the Gard du Nord. A week of talk in Paris, and five years' study in England, had instructed Miss Tallentire insufficiently in the French tongue; therefore did she wilt away at the sight of the epistle. Lady Jim translated.
"He is still ill in some hotel"--she was careful not to give the address--"but better, much better. Later he proposes to go to Russia."
"I thought he was an exile," said Joan, doubtfully.