"It's Lady Margaret Duddington," she whispered, rather in a fright. There was time for no more. Lady Meg was upon them. Sophy was identified by her dress, and, to Lady Meg's devouring eyes, by the mark.
"You're the girl who's been behaving so badly?" she said.
Seeing no profit in arguing the merits, Sophy answered "Yes."
At this point Julia observed one old gentleman nudge the other and whisper something; it is morally certain that Pindar whispered to Pikes: "Percival's girl!"
"You seem to like your own way. What are you going to do? Say you're sorry?"
"No. I'm not sorry. I'm going away."
"Come here, girl, let me look at you."
Sophy obeyed, walking up to Lady Meg and fixing her eyes on her face. She was interested, not frightened, as it seemed. Lady Meg looked long at her.
"Going away? Where to?"
Julia spoke up. "She's coming with me, please, Lady Margaret." Julia, it would seem, was a little frightened.
"Who are you?"
"Julia Robins. My mother lives there." She pointed to Woodbine Cottage. "I—I'm on the stage—"
"Lord help you!" remarked Lady Meg, disconcertingly.
"Not at all!" protested Julia, her meaning plain, her expression of it faulty. "And I—I'm going to help her to—to get an engagement. We're friends."
"What's she going to do with that on the stage?" Lady Meg's forefinger almost touched the mark.
"Oh, that's all right, Lady Margaret. Just a little cold cream and powder—"
"Nasty stuff!" said Lady Meg.
A pause followed, Lady Meg still studying Sophy's face. Then, without turning round, she made a remark obviously addressed to the gentlemen behind her:
"I expect this is Percival's young person."
"Without a doubt," said Pikes.
"And Percival was right about her, too," said Pindar.
"Think so? I ain't sure yet," said Lady Meg. "And at any rate I don't care twopence about that. But—" A long pause marked a renewed scrutiny. "Your name's Sophy, isn't it?"
"Yes." Sophy hesitated, then forced out the words: "Sophy Grouch."
"Grouch?"
"I said Grouch."
"Humph! Well, Sophy, don't go on the stage. It's a poor affair, the stage, begging Miss Julia's pardon—I'm sure she'll do admirably at it. But a poor affair it is. There's not much to be said for the real thing—but it's a deal better than the stage, Sophy."
"The real thing?" Julia saw Sophy's eyes grow thoughtful.
"The world—places—London—Paris—men and women—Lord help them! Come with me, and I'll show you all that."
"What shall I do if I come with you?"
"Do? Eat and drink, and waste time and money, like the rest of us. Eh, Pindar?"
"Of course," said Mr. Pindar, with a placid smile.
"I sha'n't be a—a servant again?"
"Everybody in my house is a slave, I'm told, but you won't be more of a slave than the rest."
"Will you have me taught?"
Lady Meg looked hard at her. For the first time she smiled, rather grimly. "Yes, I'll have you taught, and I'll show you the Queen of England, and, if you behave yourself, the Emperor of the French—Lord help him!"
"Not unless she behaves herself!" murmured Mr. Pindar.
"Hold your tongue, Pindar! Now, then, what do you say? No, wait a minute; I want you to understand it properly." She became silent for a moment. Julia was thinking her a very rude woman; but, since Mr. Pindar did not mind, who need?
Lady Meg resumed. "I won't make an obligation of you—I mean, I won't be bound to you; and you sha'n't be bound to me. You'll stay with me as long as you like, or as long as I like, as the case may be. If you want to go, put your visiting-card—yes, you'll have one—in an envelope and send it to me. And if I want you to go, I'll put a hundred-pound note in an envelope and send it to you—upon which you'll go, and no reasons given! Is it agreed?"
"It sounds all right," said Sophy.
"Did you always have that mark on your cheek?"
"Yes, always. Father told me so."
"Well, will you come?"
Sophy was torn. The stage was very attractive, and the love she had for Julia Robins held her as though by a cord. But was the stage a poor thing? Was that mysterious "real thing" better? Though even of that this strange woman spoke scornfully. Already there must have been some underground channel of understanding between them; for Sophy knew that Lady Meg was more than interested in her—that she was actually excited about her; and Lady Meg, in her turn, knew that she played a good card when she dangled before Sophy's eyes the Queen of England and the Emperor of the French—though even then came that saving "Lord help him!" to damp an over-ardent expectation.
"Let me speak to Julia," said Sophy. Lady Meg nodded; the girls linked arms and walked apart. Pindar came to Lady Meg's elbow.
"Another whim!" said he, in a low voice. Pikes was looking round the view with a kind of vacant contentment.
"Yes," she said. His lips moved. "I know what you said. You said: 'You old fool!' Pindar."
"Never, on my life, my lady!" They seemed more friends now than patroness and client. Few saw them thus, but Pindar told Dunstanbury, and the old gentleman was no liar.
"Give me one more!" she whispered, plainly excited. "That mark must mean something. It may open a way."
"For her?" he asked, smiling.
"It must for her. It may for me."
"A way where?"
"To knowledge—knowledge of the unknown. They may speak through her!"
"Lady Meg! Lady Meg! And if they don't, the hundred-pound note! It's very cruel."
"Who knows?—who knows, Pindar? Fate has her ways."
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Not half as amusing as your ladyship's!"
Sophy, twenty yards off, flung her arms round Julia. The embrace was long; it spoke farewell. Lady Meg's eyes brightened. "She's coming with me," she said. Pindar shrugged his shoulders again and fell back to heel. Sophy walked briskly up.
"I'll come, my lady," she said.
"Good. To-morrow afternoon—to London. Mrs. Brownlow has the address. Good-bye." She turned abruptly on her heel and marched off, her retinue following.
Julia came to Sophy.
"We can write," she said. "And she's right. You must be for the real thing, Sophy!"
"My dear, my dear!" murmured Sophy, half in tears. "Yes, we must write." She drew back and stood erect. "It's all very dark," she said. "But I like it. London—and Paris! On the Seine!" Old lessons came back with new import now.
"The Emperor of the French!" Julia mocked—with tears in her eyes.
A sudden thought occurred to Sophy. "What did she mean by 'Percival's young person'? Is his name Percival?"
Julia gave a little cry. "Lord Dunstanbury's? Yes. You've seen him again?"
She drew out the story. It made the sorrow of parting half forgotten.
"You owe this to him, then! How romantic!" was actress Julia's conclusion—in part a true one, no doubt. But Sophy, looking deeper, fingered the Red Star. She had tracked the magnet of Lady Meg's regard, the point of her interest, the pivot of decision for that mind of whims.
With that scene in the avenue of elm-trees at Morpingham there comes a falling of the veil. Letters passed between Sophy and Julia Robins, but they have not been preserved. The diary was not yet begun. Basil Williamson did not move in the same world with Lady Meg and her entourage: Dunstanbury was in Ireland, where his regiment was then stationed. For the next twelve months there is only one glimpse of Sophy—that a passing and accidental one, although not without its significance as throwing a light on Lady Meg's adoption of Sophy (while it lasted it amounted to that), and on the strange use to which she hoped to be able to turn herprotégée. The reference is, however, tantalizingly vague just where explicitness would have been of curious interest, though hardly of any real importance to a sensible mind.
The reference occurs in a privately printed volume of reminiscences by the late Captain Hans Fleming, R.N., a sailor of some distinction, but better known as a naturalist. Writing in the winter of 1865-66 (he gives no precise date), he describes in a letter a meeting with Lady Meg—whom, it will be noticed, he calls "old Lady Meg," although at that time she was but forty-nine. She had so early in life taken up an attitude of resolute spinsterhood that there was a tendency to exaggerate her years.
"To-day in the park I met old Lady Meg Duddington. It was piercing cold, but the carriage was drawn up under the trees. The poor spaniels on the opposite seat were shivering! She stopped me and was, for her, very gracious; she only 'Lord-helped-me' twice in the whole conversation. She was full of her ghosts and spirits, her seers and witches. She has got hold of an entirely new prophetess, a certain woman who calls herself Madame Mantis and knows all the secrets of the future, both this side the grave and the other. Beside Lady Meg sat a remarkably striking girl, to whom she introduced me, but I didn't catch the name. I gathered that this girl (who had an odd mark on one cheek, almost like a pale pink wafer) was, in old Meg's mad mind, anyhow, mixed up with the prophetess—as medium, or subject, or inspiration, or something of that kind—I don't understand that nonsense, and don't want to. But when I looked sceptical (and old Pindar chuckled—or it may have been his teeth chattering with the cold), Meg nodded her head at the girl and said: 'She'll tell you a different tale some day: if you meet her in five years' time, perhaps.' I don't know what the old lady meant; I suppose the girl did, but she looked absolutely indifferent, and, indeed, bored. One can't help being amused, but, seriously, it's rather sad for a man who was brought up in the reverence of Lord Dunstanbury to see his only daughter—a clever woman, too, naturally—devoting herself to such childish stuff."
Such is the passage; it is fair to add that most of the Captain's book is of more general interest. As he implies, he had had a long acquaintance with the Dunstanbury family, and took a particular interest in anything that related to it. Nevertheless, what he says has its place here; it fits in with and explains Lady Meg's excited and mystical exclamation to Mr. Pindar at Morpingham, "They may speak through her!" Apparently "they" had spoken—to what effect we cannot even conjecture, unless an explanation be found in a letter of the Kravonian period in which Sophy says to Julia: "You remember that saying of Mantis's when we were in London—the one about how she saw something hanging in the air over my head—something bright." That is all she says—and "something bright" leaves the matter very vague. A sword—a crown—the nimbus of a saint: imagination might play untrammelled. Still some prophecy was made; Lady Meg built on it, and Sophy (for all her apparent indifference) remembered it, and in after-days thought it worthy of recall. That is as far as we can go; and with that passing glimpse, Sophy Grouch (of course the mention of the wafer-like mark puts her identity beyond question) passes out of sight for the time; indeed, as Sophy Grouch, in the position in which we have seen her and in the name under which we have known her, she passes out of sight forever.
Lady Meg left London for Paris towards the end of 1865 or the beginning of 1866, but we hear nothing of her doings until the early summer of 1868. The veil lifts then (so far as it ever lifts from before the face of the Paris period), and shows us the establishment in the Rue de Grenelle. A queer picture it is in many ways; it gives reason to think that the state of mind to which Lady Meg had now come is but mildly described as eccentricity.
The eminent Lord Dunstanbury, Lady Meg's father, had been one of that set of English Whigs and Liberals who were much at home in Paris in the days of the July Monarchy. Among his friends was a certain Marquis de Savres, the head of an old French family of Royalist principles. This gentleman had, however, accepted the throne of Louis Philippe and the political principles and leadership of Guizot. Between him and Lord Dunstanbury there arose a close intimacy, and Lady Meg as a girl had often visited in the Rue de Grenelle. Changed as her views were, and separated as she was from most of her father's coterie in Paris, friendship and intercourse between her and the Savres family had never dropped. The present head of that family was Casimir de Savres, a young man of twenty-eight, an officer of cavalry. Being a bachelor, he preferred to dwell in a small apartment on the other side of the river, and the family house in the Rue de Grenelle stood empty. Under some arrangement (presumably a business one, for Marquis de Savres was by no means rich) Lady Meg occupied the first floor of the roomy old mansion. Here she is found established; with her, besides three French servants and an English coachman (she has for the time apparently shaken off the spaniels), is Mademoiselle Sophie de Gruche, in whose favor Sophy Grouch has effected an unobtrusive disappearance.
This harmless, if somewhat absurd, transformation was carried out with a futile elaboration, smacking of Lady Meg's sardonic perversity rather than of Sophy's directer methods. Sophy would probably have claimed the right to call herself what she pleased, and left the world to account for her name in any way it pleased. Lady Meg must needs fit her up with a story. She was the daughter of a Creole gentleman married to an English wife. Her mother being early left a widow, Sophy had been brought up entirely in England—hence her indifferent acquaintance with French. If this excuse served a purpose at first, at any rate it soon became unnecessary. Sophy's marked talent for languages (she subsequently mastered Kravonian, a very difficult dialect, in the space of a few months) made French a second native tongue to her within a year. But the story was kept up. Perhaps it imposed on nobody; but nobody was rude enough—or interested enough—to question it openly. Sophy herself never refers to it; but she used the name from this time forward on all occasions except when writing to Julia Robins, when she continues to sign "Sophy" as before—a habit which lasts to the end, notwithstanding other changes in her public or official style.
The times were stirring, a prelude to the great storm which was so soon to follow. Paris was full of men who in the next few years were to make or lose fame, to rise with a bound or fall with a crash. Into such society Lady Meg's name, rank, and parentage would have carried her, had she cared to go; she could have shown Sophy the Emperor of the French at close quarters instead of contenting herself with a literal fulfilment of her promise by pointing him out as he drove in the streets. But Lady Meg was rabid against the Empire; her "Lord help him!"—the habitual expression of contempt on her lips—was never lacking for the Emperor. Her political associates were the ladies of the Faubourg St.-Germain, and there are vague indications that Lady Meg was very busy among them and conceived herself to be engaged in intrigues of vital importance. The cracks in the imposing Imperial structure were visible enough by now, and every hostile party was on the lookout for its chance.
As we all know, perhaps no chance, certainly no power to use a chance, was given to Lady Meg's friends; and we need not repine that ignorance spares us the trouble of dealing with their unfruitful hopes and disappointed schemes. Still the intrigues, the gossip, and the Royalist atmosphere were to Sophy in some sort an introduction to political interests, and no doubt had an influence on her mind. So far as she ever acquired political principles—the existence of such in her mind is, it must be confessed, doubtful—they were the tenets which reigned in the Rue de Grenelle and in the houses of Lady Meg's Royalist allies.
So on one side of Lady Meg are the nobles and their noble ladies sulking and scheming, and on the other—a bizarre contrast—her witch and her wizard, Madame Mantis and Pharos. Where the carcass is, there will the vultures be; should the carcass get up and walk, presumably the vultures would wing an expectant way after it. Madame Mantis—the woman of the prophecy about "something bright"—had followed Lady Meg to Paris, scenting fresh prey. But a more ingenious and powerful scoundrel came on the scene; in association with Mantis—probably very close and not creditable association—is Pharos,aliasJean Coulin. In after-days, under the Republic, this personage got himself into trouble, and was tried at Lille for obtaining no less a sum than one hundred and fifty thousand francs from a rich old Royalist lady who lived in the neighborhood of the town. The rogue got his money under cover of a vaticination that MacMahon would restore the monarchy—a nearer approach to the real than he reached in his dealings with Lady Meg, but not, probably, on that account any the more favorably viewed by his judges.
The President's interrogation of the prisoner, ranging over his whole life, tells us the bulk of what we know of him; but the earliest sketch comes from Sophy herself, in one of the rare letters of this period which have survived. "A dirty, scrubby fellow, with greasy hair and a squint in his eye," she tells Julia Robins. "He wears a black cloak down to his heels, and a gimcrack thing round his neck that he calls his 'periapt'—charm, I suppose he means. Says he can work spells with it; and his precious partner Mantiskisses it(Italics are Sophy's) whenever she meets him. Phew! I'd like to give them both a dusting! What do you think? Pharos, as he calls himself, tells Lady Meg he can make the dead speak to her; and she says that isn't it possible that, since they've died themselves and know all about it, they may be able to tell her how not to! Seeing how this suits his book, it isn't Pharos who's going to say 'no,' though he tells her to make a will in case anything happens before he's ready to 'establish communication'—and perhaps they won't tell, after all, but he thinks they will! Now I come into the game! Me being very sympathetic, they're to talkthrough me(Italics again are Sophy's). Did you ever hear of such nonsense? I told Master Pharos that I didn't know whether his ghosts would talk through me, but I didn't need any of their help to pretty well see through him! But Lady Meg's hot on it. I suppose it's what I'm here for, and I must let him try—or pretend to. It's all one to me, and it pleases Lady Meg. Only he and I have nothing else to do with each other! I'll see to that. To tell you the truth, I don't like the look in his eye sometimes—and I don't think Mrs. Mantis would either!"
As a medium Sophy was a failure. She was antagonistic—purposely antagonistic, said Jean Coulin, attempting to defend himself against the President's suggestion that he had received something like three thousand pounds from Lady Meg and given her not a jot of supernatural information in return. This failure of Sophy's was the first rift between Lady Meg and her. Pharos could have used it against her, and his power was great; but it was not at present his game to eject her from the household. He had other ends in view; and there was no question of the hundred-pound note yet.
It is pleasant to turn to another figure—one which stands out in the meagre records of this time and bears its prominence well. Casimir Marquis de Savres is neither futile nor sordid, neither schemer nor impostor. He was a brave and simple soldier and gentleman, holding his ancestral principles in his heart, but content to serve his country in evil times until good should come. He was courteous and attentive to Lady Meg, touching her follies with a light hand; and to Sophy he gave his love with an honest and impetuous sincerity, which he masked by a gay humor—lest his lady should be grieved at the havoc she herself had made. His feelings about Pharos, his partner, and his jugglings, need no description. "If you are neither restoring the King nor raising the devil to-morrow, I should like to come to breakfast," he writes in one of his early letters. "O Lady of the Red Star, if it were to restore you to your kingdom in the star whose sign you bear, I would raise the devil himself, all laws of Church and State notwithstanding! I came on Tuesday evening—you were surrounded by most unimpeachable dowagers. Excellent principles and irreproachable French! But,mon Dieu, for conversation! I came on Thursday afternoon. Pharos and Mantis held sway, and I dared not look round for fear of my ancestors being there to see me in the Emperor's uniform! Tell me when there will be no ancestors living or dead, nor dowagers nor devils, that I may come and see you. If dear Lady Meg (Laidee Maig!)[1]shouldbe pursuing one or the other in other places, yet forbid me not to come. She has whims, we know, but not, thank Heaven, many principles; or, if she has our principles, at least she scorns our etiquette. Moreover, queens make etiquette, and are not ruled by what they make. And Star-Queens are more free and more absolute still. What a long note—all to ask for a breakfast! No, it's to ask for a sight of your eyes—and a volume would not be too long for me to write—though it would be a bad way to make friends with the eyes that had to read it! I believe I go on writing because it seems in some way to keep you with me; and so, if I could write always of you, I would lay down my sword and take up the pen for life. Yet writing to you, though sweet as heaven, is as the lowest hell from which Pharos fetches devils as compared with seeing you. Be kind. Farewell.
"Casimir."
To this he adds a postscript, referring apparently to some unrecorded incident: "Yes, the Emperor did ask who it was the other day. I was sure his eyehit the mark. I have the information direct."
It is very possible that this direct information pleased Sophy.
Last among the prominent members of the group in which Sophy lived in Paris is Madame Zerkovitch. Her husband was of Russian extraction, his father having settled in Kravonia and become naturalized there. The son was now in Paris as correspondent to one of the principal papers of Slavna. Madame Zerkovitch was by birth a Pole; not a remarkable woman in herself, but important in this history as the effective link between these days and Sophy's life in Kravonia. She was small and thin, with auburn hair and very bright, hazel eyes, with light-colored lashes. An agreeable talker, an accomplished singer, and a kind-hearted woman, she was an acquaintance to be welcomed. Whatever strange notions she harbored about Sophy in after-days, she conceived from the beginning, and never lost, a strong affection for her, and their friendship ripened quickly from their first meeting at Lady Meg's, where Marie Zerkovitch was a frequent visitor, and much interested in Pharos's hocus-pocus.
The occasion was one of the séances where Sophy was to be medium. It was a curious scene. Gaunt Lady Meg, with her eyes strained and eager, superintended the arrangements. "Lord help you!" was plentiful for everybody, even for the prophet Pharos himself when his miracle was behind time. Mantis was there, subterraneously scornful of her unwilling rival; and the rogue Pharos himself, with his oily glibness, his cheap mystery, and his professional jargon. Two or three dowagers and Casimir de Savres—who had to unbuckle his sword and put it outside the door for reasons insufficiently explained—completed the party. In the middle sat Sophy, smiling patiently, but with her white brow wrinkled just a little beneath the arching masses of her dark hair. On her lips the smile persisted all through; the mark was hardly visible. "No more than the slightest pinkness; I didn't notice it till I had looked at her for full five minutes," says Marie Zerkovitch. This was, no doubt, the normal experience of those who met Sophy first in moments of repose or of depression.
Sophy is to "go off." Pharos makes his passes and goes through the rest of his performance.
"I feel nothing at all—not even sleepy," said Sophy. "Only just tired of staring at monsieur!"
Casimir de Savres laughed; old Lady Meg looked furious; Mantis hid a sickly smile. Down go the lights to a dull gloom—at the prophet's request. More gestures, more whisperings, and then sighs of exhaustion from the energetic wizard.
"Get on, Lord help you!" came testily from Lady Meg. Had Pharos been veritably her idol, she would have kicked him into granting her prayer.
"She won't give me her will—she won't be passive," he protests, almost eliciting a perverse sympathy.
He produced a glittering disk, half as large again as a five-franc piece; it gave forth infinite sparkles through the dark of the room. "Look at that! Look hard—and think of nothing else!" he commanded.
Silence fell on the room. Quick breaths came from eager Lady Meg; otherwise all was still.
"It's working!" whispered the wizard. "The power is working."
Silence again. Then a sudden, overpowering peal of laughter from the medium—hearty, rippling, irrepressible and irresistible.
"Oh, Lady Meg, I feel such a fool—oh, such a fool!" she cried—and her laughter mastered her again.
Irresistible! Marie Zerkovitch joined in Casimir's hearty mirth, Mantis's shrill cackle and the sniggers of the dowagers swelled the chorus. Casimir sprang up and turned up the gas, laughing still. The wizard stood scowling savagely; Lady Meg glared malignantly at her ill-chosen medium and disappointingprotégée.
"What's the reason for it, Lord help you?" she snarled, with a very nasty look at Pharos.
He saw the danger. His influence was threatened, his patroness's belief in him shaken.
"I don't know," he answered, in apparent humility. "I can't account for it. It happens, so far as I know, only in one case—and Heaven forbid that I should suggest that of mademoiselle."
"What is the case?" snapped Lady Meg, by no means pacified—in fact, still dangerously sceptical.
Pharos made an answer, grave and serious in tone in purpose and effect malignantly nonsensical: "When the person whom it is sought to subject to this particular influence (he touched the pocket where his precious disk now lay) has the Evil Eye."
An appeal to a superstition old as the hills and widespread as the human race—would it ever fail to hit some mark in a company of a dozen? Casimir laughed in hearty contempt, Sophy laughed in mischievous mockery. But two of the dowagers crossed themselves, Lady Meg started and glowered—and little Madame Zerkovitch marked, recorded, and remembered. Her mind was apt soil for seed of that order.
That, in five years' time, five years in jail awaited the ingenious Monsieur Pharos occasions a consoling reflection.
Sophy's enemies were at work—and Sophy was careless. Such is the history of the next twelve months. Mantis was installed medium now—and the revelations came. But they came slow, vague, fitful, tantalizing. Something was wrong, Pharos confessed ruefully—what could it be? For surely Lady Meg by her faith (and, it may be added, her liberality) deserved well of the Unseen Powers? He hinted at that Evil Eve again, but without express accusation. Under "the influence" Mantis would speak of "the malign one"; but Mantis, when awake, thought Mademoiselle de Gruche a charming young lady! It was odd and mysterious. Pharos could make nothing of it; he, too, thought Mademoiselle Sophie—he advanced to that pleasant informality of description—quite ravishing and entirely devoted to Lady Meg, only, unhappily, so irresponsive to the Unseen—a trifle unsympathetic, it might be. But what would you? The young had no need to think of death or the dead. Was it to be expected, then, that Mademoiselle Sophie would be a good subject, or take much interest in the work, great and wonderful though it might be?
The pair of rogues did their work well and quietly—so quietly that nothing of it would be known were it not that they quarrelled later on over the spoils of this and other transactions, and Madame Mantis, in the witness-box at Lille, used her memory and her tongue freely. "The plan now was to get rid of the young lady," she said, plainly. "Pharos feared her power over my lady, and that my lady might leave her all the money. Pharos hated the young lady because she would have nothing to say to him, and told him plainly that she thought him a charlatan. She had courage, yes! But if she would have joined in with him—why, then into the streets with me! I knew that well enough, and Pharos knew I knew it. So I hated her, too, fearing that some day she and he would make up their differences, and I—that for me! Yes, that was how we were, Monsieur le Président." Her lucid exposition elicited a polite compliment from Monsieur le Président—and we also are obliged to her.
But Sophy was heedless. She showed afterwards that she could fight well for what she loved well, and that with her an eager heart made a strong hand. Her heart was not in this fight. The revelation of mad Lady Meg's true motive for taking her up may well have damped a gratitude otherwise becoming in Sophy Grouch transmuted to Sophie de Gruche. Yet the gratitude remained; she fought for Lady Meg—for her sanity and some return of sanity in her proceedings. In so fighting she fought against herself—for Lady Meg was very mad now. For herself she did not fight; her heart and her thoughts were elsewhere. The schemes in the Rue de Grenelle occupied her hardly more than the clash of principles, the efforts of a falling dynasty, the struggles of rising freedom, the stir and seething of the great city and the critical times in which she lived.
For she was young, and the Lord of Youth had come to visit her in his shower of golden promise. The days were marked for her no more by the fawning advances or the spiteful insinuations of Pharos than by the heroics of an uneasy emperor or the ingenious experiments in reconciling contradictions wherein his ministers were engaged. For her the days lived or lived not as she met or failed to meet Casimir de Savres. It was the season of her first love. Yet, with all its joy, the shadow of doubt is over it. It seems not perfect; the delight is in receiving, not in giving; his letters to her, full of reminiscences of their meetings and talks, are shaded with doubt and eloquent of insecurity. She was no more than a girl in years; but in some ways her mind was precociously developed—her ambition was spreading its still growing wings. Casimir's constant tone of deference—almost of adulation—marks in part the man, in part the convention in which he had been bred; but it marks, too, the suppliant: to the last he is the wooer, not the lover, and at the end of his ecstasy lies the risk of despair. For her part she often speaks of him afterwards, and always with the tenderest affection; she never ceased to carry with her wherever she went the bundle of his letters, tied with a scrap of ribbon and inscribed with a date. But there is one reference, worthy of note, to her innermost sentiments towards him, to the true state of her heart as she came to realize it by-and-by. "I loved him, but I hadn't grown into my feelings," she says. Brief and almost accidental as the utterance is, it is full of significance; but its light is thrown back. It is the statement of how she came to know how she had been towards him, not of how in those happy days she seemed to herself to be.
He knew about Grouch; he had been told by a copious superfluity of female friendliness—by Lady Meg, cloaking suspicious malignity under specious penitence; by Madame Mantis with impertinent and intrusive archness; by Marie Zerkovitch in the sheer impossibility of containing within herself any secret which had the bad fortune to be intrusted to her. Sophy's own confession, made with incredible difficulty—she hated the name so—fell flat and was greeted with a laugh of mockery.
It happened at theCalvaireat Fontainebleau, whither they had made a day's and night's excursion, under the escort of Marie Zerkovitch and a student friend of hers from the Quartier Latin. These two they had left behind sipping beer at a restaurant facing the château. On the eminence which commands the white little town dropped amid the old forest, over against the red roofs of the palace vying in richness with the turning leaves, in sight of a view in its own kind unsurpassed, in its own charm unequalled, Sophy broke the brutal truth which was to end the infatuation of the head of a house old as St. Louis.
"It's bad to pronounce, is it?" asked Casimir, smiling and touching her hand. "Ah, well, good or bad, I couldn't pronounce it, so to me it is nothing."
"They'd all say it was terrible—a mésalliance."
"I fear only one voice on earth saying that."
"And the fraud I am—de Gruche!" She caught his hand tightly. Never before had it occurred to her to defend or to excuse the transparent fiction.
"I know stars fall," he said, with his pretty gravity, not too grave. "I wish that they may rise to their own height again—and I rise with them."
The sun sank behind the horizon. A gentle afterglow of salmon-pink rested over the palace and city; the forest turned to a frame of smoky, brownish black. Casimir waved a hand towards it and laughed merrily.
"Before we were, it was—after we are, it shall be! I sound as old as Scripture! It has seen old masters—and great mistresses! Saving the proprieties, weren't you Montespan or Pompadour?"
"De la Vallière?" she laughed. "Or Maintenon?"
"For good or evil, neither! Do I hurt you?"
"No; you make me think, though," answered Sophy. "Why?"
"They niggled—at virtue or at vice. You don't niggle! Neither did Montespan nor Pompadour."
"And so I am to be—Marquise de—?"
"Higher, higher!" he laughed. "Madame la Maréchale—!"
"It is war, then—soon—you think?" She turned to him with a sudden tension.
He pointed a Frenchman's eloquent forefinger to the dark mass of the château, whose chimneys rose now like gloomy interrogation-marks to an unresponsive, darkened sky. "He is there now—the Emperor! Perhaps he walks in his garden by the round pond—thinking, dreaming, balancing."
"Throwing balls in the air, as conjurers do?"
"Yes, my star."
"And if he misses the first?"
"He'll seek applause by the second. And the second, I think, would be war."
"And you would—go?"
"To what other end do I love the Lady of the Red Star—alas! I can't see it—save to bring her glory?"
"That's French," said Sophy, with a laugh. "Wouldn't you rather stay with me and be happy?"
"Who speaks to me?" he cried, springing to his feet. "Not you!"
"No, no," she answered, "I have no fear. What is it, Casimir, that drives us on?"
"Drives us on! You! You, too?"
"It's not a woman's part, is it?"
He caught her round the waist, and she allowed his clasp. But she grew grave, yet smiled again softly.
"If all life were an evening at Fontainebleau—a fine evening at Fontainebleau!" she murmured, in the low clearness which marked her voice.
"Mightn't it be?"
"With war? And with what drives us on?"
He sighed, and his sigh puzzled her.
"Oh, well," she cried, "at least you know I'm Sophy Grouch, and my father was as mean as the man who opens your lodge-gate."
The sky had gone a blue-black. A single star sombrely announced the coming pageant.
"And his daughter high as the hopes that beckon me to my career!"
"You've a wonderful way of talking," smiled Sophy Grouch—simple Essex in contact with Paris at that instant.
"You'll be my wife, Sophie?"
"I don't think Lady Meg will keep me long. Pharos is working hard—so Marie Zerkovitch declares. I should bring you a dot of two thousand five hundred francs!"
"Do you love me?"
The old question rang clear in the still air. Who has not heard it of women—or uttered it of men? Often so easy, sometimes so hard. When all is right save one thing—or when all is wrong save one thing—then it is hard to answer, and may have been hard to ask. With Casimir there was no doubt, save the doubt of the answer. Sophy stood poised on a hesitation. The present seemed perfect. Only an unknown future cried to her through the falling night.
"I'll win glory for you," he cried. "The Emperor will fight!"
"You're no Emperor's man!" she mocked.
"Yes, while he means France. I'm for anybody who means France." For a moment serious, the next he kissed her hand merrily. "Or for anybody who'll give me a wreath, a medal, a toy to bring home to her I love."
"You're very fascinating," Sophy confessed.
It was not the word. Casimir fell from his exaltation. "It's not love, that of yours," said he.
"No—I don't know. You might make it love. Oh, how I talk beyond my rights!"
"Beyond your rights? Impossible! May I go on trying?"
He saw Sophy's smile dimly through the gloom. From it he glanced to the dying gleam of the white houses dropped among the trees, to the dull mass of the ancient home of history and kings. But back he came to the living, elusive, half-seen smile.
"Can you stop?" said Sophy.
He raised his hat from his head and stooped to kiss her hand.
"Nor would nor could," said he—"in the warmth of life or the cold hour of death!"
"No, no—if you die, it's gloriously!" The hour carried her away. "Casimir, I wish I were sure!"
The spirit of his race filled his reply: "You want to be dull?"
"No—I—I—I want you to kiss my cheek."
"May I salute the star?"
"But it's no promise!"
"It's better!"
"My dear, I—I'm very fond of you."
"That's all?"
"Enough for to-night! What's he thinking of down there?"
"The Emperor? I'm not so much as sure he's there, really. Somebody said he had started for St. Cloud this morning."
"Pretend he's there!"
"Then of anything except how many men die for what he wants."
"Or of how many women weep?"
Her reply set a new light to his passion. "You'd weep?" he cried.
"Oh, I suppose so!" The answer was half a laugh, half a sob.
"But not too much! No more than the slightest dimness to the glowing star!"
Sophy laughed in a tremulous key; her body shook. She laid her hands in his. "No more, no more. Surely Marie and the student are bored? Isn't it supper-time? Oh, Casimir, if I were worthy, if I were sure! What's ahead of us? Must we go back? To-night, up here, it all seems so simple! Does he mean war? He down there? And you'll fight!" She looked at him for an instant. He was close to her. She thrust him away from her. "Don't fight thinking of me," she said.
"How otherwise?" he asked.
She tossed her head impatiently. "I don't know—but—but Pharos makes me afraid. He—he says that things I love die."
The young soldier laughed. "That leaves him pretty safe," said he.
She put her arm through his, and they walked down. It had been a night to be forgotten only when all is. Yet she went from him unpledged, and tossed in her bed, asking: "Shall I?" and answered: "I'll decide to-morrow!"
But to-morrow was not at theCalvairenor in the seducing sweetness of the silent trees. When she rose, he was gone—and the student, too. Marie Zerkovitch, inquisitively friendly, flung a fly for news.
"He's as fine a gentleman as Lord Dunstanbury!" cried Sophy Grouch.
"As who?" asked Marie.
Sophy smiled over her smoking coffee. "As the man who first saw me," she said. "But, oh, I'm puzzled!"
Marie Zerkovitch bit her roll.
"Armand was charming," she observed. The student was Armand. He, too, let it be recorded, had made a little love, yet in all seemly ardor.
So ends this glimpse of the happy days.
That feverish month of July—fitting climax to the scorching, arid summer of 1870—had run full half its course. Madness had stricken the rulers of France; to avoid danger they rushed on destruction. Gay madness spread through the veins of Paris. Perverse always, Lady Meg Duddington chose this moment for coming back to her senses—or at least for abandoning the particular form of insanity to which she had devoted the last five years.
One afternoon she called her witch and her wizard. "You're a pair of quacks, and I've been an old fool," she said, composedly, sitting straight up in her high-backed chair. She flung a couple of thousand-franc notes across the table. "You can go," she ended, with contemptuous brevity. Mantis's evil temper broke out: "She has done this, the malign one!" Pharos was wiser; he had not done badly out of Lady Meg, and madness such as hers is apt to be recurrent. His farewell was gentle, his exit not ungraceful; yet he, too, prayed her to beware of a certain influence. "Stuff! You don't know what you're talking about!" Lady Meg jerked out, and pointed with her finger to the door. "So we went out, and to avoid any trouble we left Paris the same day. But this man here would not give me any of the money, though I had done as much to earn it as he had, or more." So injured Madame Mantis told Monsieur le Président at Lille.
Early on the morning of Sunday, the 17th, having received word through Lady Meg's maid that her presence was not commanded in the Rue de Grenelle, Sophy slipped round to the Rue du Bac and broke in on Marie Zerkovitch, radiant with her great news and imploring her friend to celebrate it by a day in the country.
"It means that dear old Lady Meg will be what she used to be to me!" she cried. "We shall go back to England, I expect, and—I wonder what that will be like!"
Her face grew suddenly thoughtful. Back to England! How would that suit Sophie de Gruche? And what was to happen about Casimir de Savres? The period of her long, sweet indecision was threatened with a forced conclusion.
Marie Zerkovitch was preoccupied against both her friend's joy and her friend's perplexity. Great affairs touched her at home. There would be war, she said, certainly war; to-day the Senate went to St. Cloud to see the Emperor. Zerkovitch had started thither already, on the track of news. The news in the near future would certainly be war, and Zerkovitch would follow the armies, still on the track of news. "He went before, in the war of 'sixty-six," she said, her lips trembling. "And he all but died of fever; that kills the correspondents just as much as the soldiers. Ah, it's so dangerous, Sophie—and so terrible to be left behind alone. I don't know what I shall do! My husband wants me to go home. He doesn't believe the French will win, and he fears trouble for those who stay here." She looked at last at Sophy's clouded face. "Ah, and your Casimir—he will be at the front!"
"Yes, Casimir will be at the front," said Sophy, a ring of excitement hardly suppressed in her voice.
"If he should be killed!" murmured Marie, throwing her arms out in a gesture of lamentation.
"You bird of ill omen! He'll come back covered with glory."
The two spent a quiet day together, Sophy helping Marie in her homely tasks. Zerkovitch's campaigning kit was overhauled—none knew how soon orders for an advance might come—his buttons put on, his thick stockings darned. The hours slipped away in work and talk. At six o'clock they went out and dined at a small restaurant hard by. Things seemed very quiet there. The fat waiter told them with a shrug: "We sha'n't have much noise here to-night—the lads will be over there!" He pointed across the river. "They'll be over there most of the night—on thegrands boulevards. Because it's war, madame. Oh, yes, it's war!" The two young women sipped their coffee in silence. "As a lad I saw 1830. I was out in the streets in 1851. What shall I see next?" he asked them as he swept his napkin over the marble table-top. If he stayed at his post, he saw many strange things; unnatural fires lit his skies, and before his doors brother shed brother's blood.
The friends parted at half-past seven. Marie hoped her husband would be returning home soon, and with news; Sophy felt herself due in the Rue de Grenelle. She reached the house there a little before eight. Theconciergewas not in his room; she went up-stairs unseen, and passed into the drawing-room. The inner door leading to the room Lady Meg occupied stood open. Sophy called softly, but there was no answer. She walked towards the door and was about to look into the room, thinking that perhaps Lady Meg was asleep, when she heard herself addressed. The Frenchwoman who acted as their cook had come in and stood now on the threshold with a puzzled, distressed look on her face.
"I'm sorry, Mademoiselle Sophie, to tell you, but my lady has gone."
"Gone! Where to?"
"To England, I believe. This morning, after you had gone out, she ordered everything to be packed. It was done. She paid us here off, bidding me alone stay till orders reached me from Monsieur le Marquis. Then she went; only the coachman accompanied her. I think she started for Calais. At least, she is gone."
"She said—said nothing about me?"
"You'll see there's a letter for you on the small table in the window there."
"Oh yes! Thank you."
"Your room is ready for you to-night."
"I've dined. I shall want nothing. Good-night."
Sophy walked over to the little table in the window, and for a few moments stood looking at the envelope which lay there, addressed to her in Lady Meg's sprawling hand. The stately room in the Rue de Grenelle seemed filled with a picture which its walls had never seen; old words re-echoed in Sophy's ears: "If I want you to go, I'll put a hundred-pound note in an envelope and send it to you; upon which you'll go, and no reasons given! Is it agreed?" As if from a long way off, she heard a servant-girl answer: "It sounds all right." She saw the old elm-trees at Morpingham, and heard the wind murmur in their boughs; Pindar chuckled, and Julia Robins's eyes were wet with tears.
"And no reasons given!" It had sounded all right—before five years of intimacy and a life transformed. It sounded different now. Yet the agreement had been made between the strange lady and the eager girl. Nor were reasons hard to find. They stood out brutally plain. Having sent her prophet to the right about, Lady Meg wanted no more of her medium—her most disappointing medium. "They" would not speak through Sophy; perhaps Lady Meg did not now want them to speak at all.
Sophy tore the envelope right across its breadth and shook out the flimsy paper within. It was folded in four. She did not trouble to open it. Lady Meg was a woman of her word, and here was the hundred-pound note of the Bank of England—"upon which you'll go, and no reasons given!" With a bitter smile she noticed that the note was soiled, the foldings old, the edges black where they were exposed. She had no doubt that all these years Lady Meg had carried it about, so as to be ready for the literal fulfilment of her bond.
"Upon which," said Sophy, "I go."
The bitter smile lasted perhaps a minute more; then the girl flung herself into a chair in a fit of tears as bitter. She had served—or failed to serve—Lady Meg's mad purpose, and she was flung aside. Very likely she had grown hateful—she, the witness of insane whims now past and out of favor. The dismissal might not be unnatural; but, for all their bargain, the manner was inhuman. They had lived and eaten and drunk together for so long. Had there been no touch of affection, no softening of the heart? It seemed not—it seemed not. Sophy wept and wondered. "Oh, that I had never left you, Julia!" she cries in her letter, and no doubt cried now; for Julia had given her a friend's love. If Lady Meg had given her only what one spares for a dog—a kind word before he is banished, a friendly lament at parting!
Suddenly through the window came a boy's shrill voice: "Vive la guerre!"
Sophy sprang to her feet, caught up the dirty note, and thrust it inside her glove. Without delay, seemingly without hesitation, she left the house, passed swiftly along the street, and made for the Pont Royal. She was bound for the other bank and for the Boulevard des Italiens, where Casimir de Savres had his lodging. The stream of traffic set with her. She heeded it not. The streets were full of excited groups, but there was no great tumult yet. Men were eagerly reading the latest editions of the papers. Sophy pushed on till she reached Casimir's house. She was known there. Her coming caused surprise to theconcierge—it was not the proper thing; but he made no difficulty. He showed her to Casimir's sitting-room, but of Casimir he could give no information, save that he presumed he would return to sleep.
"I must wait—I must see him," she said; and, as the man left her, she went to the window, flung it open wide, and stood there, looking down into the great street.
The lights blazed now. Every seat at everycaféwas full. The newspapers did a great trade; a wave of infinite talk, infinite chaff, infinite laughter rose to her ears. A loud-voiced fellow was selling pictures of the King of Prussia—as he looks now, and as he will look! The second sheet never failed of a great success. Bands of lads came by with flags and warlike shouts. Some cheered them, more laughed and chaffed. One broad-faced old man she distinguished in thecaféopposite; he looked glum and sulky and kept arguing to his neighbor, wagging a fat forefinger at him repeatedly; the neighbor shrugged bored shoulders; after all, he had not made the war—it was the Emperor and those gentlemen at St. Cloud! As she watched, the stir grew greater, the bands of marching students more frequent and noisy, "A Berlin!" they cried now, amid the same mixture of applause and tolerant amusement. A party of girls paraded down the middle of the street, singing "J'aime les militaires!" The applause grew to thunder as they went by, and the laughter broke into one great crackle when the heroines had passed.
She turned away with a start, conscious of a presence in the room. Casimir came quickly across to her, throwing his helmet on the table as he passed. He took her hands. "I know. Lady Meg wrote to me," he said. "And you are here!"
"I have no other home now," she said.
With a light of joy in his eyes he kissed her lips.
"I come to you only when I'm in trouble!" she said, softly.
"It is well," he answered, and drew her with him back to the window.
Together they stood looking down.
"It is war, then?" she asked.
"Without doubt it's war—without doubt," he answered, gravely. "And beyond that no man knows anything."
"And you?" she asked.
He took her hands again, both of hers in his. "My lady of the Red Star!" he murmured, softly.
"And you?"
"You wouldn't have it otherwise?"
"Heaven forbid! God go with you as my heart goes! When do you go?"
"I take the road in an hour for Strasburg. We are to be of MacMahon's corps."
"In an hour?"
"Yes."
"Your preparations—are they made?"
"Yes."
"And you are free?"
"Yes."
"Then you've an hour to make me sure I love you!"
He answered as to a woman of his own stock.
"I have an hour now—and all the campaign," said he.
The letter which gives Julia Robins the history of that Sunday—so eventful alike for France and for Sophy—is the last word of hers from Paris. Julia attached importance to it, perhaps for its romantic flavor, perhaps because she fancied that danger threatened her friend. At any rate, she bestowed it with the care she gave to the later letters, and did not expose it to the hazards which destroyed most of its predecessors. It is dated from Marie Zerkovitch's apartment in the Rue du Bac, and it ends: "I shall stay here, whatever happens—unless Casimir tells me to meet him in Berlin!"
The rash comprehensiveness of "whatever happens" was not for times like those, when neither man nor nation knew what fate an hour held; but for three weeks more she abode with Marie Zerkovitch. Marie was much disturbed in her mind. Zerkovitch had begun to send her ominous letters from the front—or as near thereto as he could get; the burden of them was that things looked bad for the French, and that her hold on Paris should be a loose one. He urged her to go home, where he would join her—for a visit at all events, very likely to stay. Marie began to talk of going home in a week or so; but she lingered on for the sake of being nearer the news of the war. So, amid the rumors of unreal victories and the tidings of reverses only too real, if not yet great, the two women waited.
Casimir had found time and opportunity to send Sophy some half-dozen notes (assuming she preserved all she received). On the 5th of August, the eve of Wõrth, he wrote at somewhat greater length: "It is night. I am off duty for an hour. I have been in the saddle full twelve hours, and I believe that, except the sentries and the outposts, I am the only man awake. We need to sleep. The Red Star, which shines everywhere for me, shines for all of us over our bivouac to-night. It must be that we fight to-morrow. Fritz is in front of us, and to-morrow he will come on. The Marshal must stop him and spoil his game; if we don't go forward now, we must go back. And we don't mean going back. It will be the first big clash—and a big one, I think, it will be. Our fellows are in fine heart (I wish their boots were as good!), but those devils over there—well, they can fight, too, and Fritz can get every ounce out of them. I am thinking of glory and of you. Is it not one and the same thing? For, in that hour, I didn't make you sure! I know it. Sophie, I'm hardly sorry for it. It seems sweet to have something left to do. Ah, but you're hard, aren't you? Shall I ever be sure of you? Even though I march into Berlin at the head of a regiment!
"I can say little more—the orderly waits for my letter. Yet I have so much, much more to say. All comes back to me in vivid snatches. I am with you in the old house—or by theCalvaire(you remember?); or again by the window; or while we walked back that Sunday night. I hear your voice—the low, full-charged voice. I see your eyes; the star glows anew for me. Adieu! I live for you always so long as I live. If I die, it will be in the thought of you, and they will kill no prouder man than Sophie's lover. To have won your love (ah, by to-morrow night, yes!) and to die for France—would it be ill done for a short life? By my faith, no! I'll make my bow to my ancestors without shame. 'I, too, have done my part, messieurs!' say I, as I sit down with my forefathers. Sophie, adieu! You won't forget? I don't think you can quite forget. Your picture rides with me, your star shines ahead.
"Casimir."
He was not wrong. They fought next day. The letter is endorsed "8th August," presumably the date of its receipt. That day came also the news of the disaster. On the 11th the casualty list revealed Casimir de Savres's name. A few lines from a brother officer a day later gave scanty details. In the great charge of French cavalry which marked the closing stages of the battle he had been the first man hit of all his regiment—shot through the heart—and through the picture of Sophy which lay over his heart.
No word comes from Sophy herself. And Madame Zerkovitch is brief: "She showed me the picture. The bullet passed exactly through where that mark on her cheek is. It was fearful; I shuddered; I hoped she didn't see. She seemed quite stunned. But she insisted on coming with me to Kravonia, where I had now determined to go at once. I did not want her to come. I thought no good would come of it. But what could I do? She would not return to England; she could not stay alone in Paris. I was the only friend she had in the world. She asked no more than to travel with me. 'When once I am there, I can look after myself,' she said."
The pair—a little fragment of a great throng, escaping or thrust forth—left Paris together on the 13th or 14th of August, en route for Kravonia. With Sophy went the bullet-pierced picture and the little bundle of letters. She did not forget. With a sore wound in her heart she turned to face a future dark, uncertain, empty of all she had loved. And—had she seen Marie Zerkovitch's shudder? Did she remember again, as she had remembered by theCalvaireat Fontainebleau, how Pharos had said that what she loved died? She had bidden Casimir not fight thinking of her. Thinking of her, he had fought and died. All she ever wrote about her departure is one sentence—"I went to Kravonia in sheer despair of the old life; I had to have something new."
Stricken she went forth from the stricken city, where hundreds of men were cutting down the trees beneath whose shade she had often walked and ridden with her lover.
The ancient city of Slavna, for a thousand years or more and under many dynasties the capital of Kravonia, is an island set in a plain. It lies in the broad valley of the Krath, which at this point flows due east. Immediately above the city the river divides into two branches, known as the North and the South rivers; Slavna is clasped in the embrace of these channels. Conditioned by their course, its form is not circular, but pear-shaped, for they bend out in gradual broad curves to their greatest distance from one another, reapproaching quickly after that point is passed till they meet again at the end—or, rather, what was originally the end—of the city to the east; the single reunited river may stand for the stalk of the pear.
In old days the position was a strong one; nowadays it is obviously much less defensible; and those in power had recognized this fact in two ways—first by allocating money for a new and scientific system of fortifications; secondly by destroying almost entirely the ancient and out-of-date walls which had once been the protection of the city. Part of the wall on the north side, indeed, still stood, but where it had escaped ruin it was encumbered and built over with warehouses and wharves; for the North River is the channel of commerce and the medium of trade with the country round about. To the south the wall has been entirely demolished, its site being occupied by a boulevard, onto which faces a line of handsome modern residences—for as the North River is for trade, so the South is for pleasure—and this boulevard has been carried across the stream and on beyond the old limits of the city, and runs for a mile or farther on the right bank of the reunited Krath, forming a delightful and well-shaded promenade where the citizens are accustomed to take their various forms of exercise.
Opposite to it, on the left bank, lies the park attached to the Palace. That building itself, dating from 1820 and regrettably typical of the style of its period, faces the river on the left bank just where the stream takes a broad sweep to the south, giving a rounded margin to the King's pleasure-grounds. Below the Palace there soon comes open country on both banks. The boulevard merges in the main post-road to Volseni and to the mountains which form the eastern frontier of the kingdom. At this date, and for a considerable number of years afterwards, the only railway line in Kravonia did not follow the course of the Krath (which itself afforded facilities for traffic and intercourse), but ran down from the north, having its terminus on the left bank of the North River, whence a carriage-bridge gave access to the city.
To vote money is one thing, to raise it another, and to spend it on the designated objects a third. Not a stone nor a sod of the new forts was yet in place, and Slavna's solitary defence was the ancient castle which stood on the left bank of the river just at the point of bisection, facing the casino and botanical gardens on the opposite bank. Suleiman's Tower, a relic of Turkish rule, is built on a simple plan—a square curtain, with a bastion at each corner, encloses a massive circular tower. The gate faces the North River, and a bridge, which admits of being raised and lowered, connects this outwork with the north wall of the city, which at this point is in good preservation. The fort is roomy; two or three hundred men could find quarters there; and although it is, under modern conditions, of little use against an enemy from without, it occupies a position of considerable strength with regard to the city itself. It formed at this time the headquarters and residence of the Commandant of the garrison, a post held by the heir to the throne, the Prince of Slavna.
In spite of the flatness of the surrounding country, the appearance of Slavna is not unpicturesque. Time and the hand of man (the people are a color-loving race) have given many tints, soft and bright, to the roofs, gables, and walls of the old quarter in the north town, over which Suleiman's Tower broods with an antique impressiveness. Behind the pleasant residences which border on the southern boulevard lie handsome streets of commercial buildings and shops, these last again glowing with diversified and gaudy colors. In the centre of the city, where, but for its bisection, we may imagine the Krath would have run, a pretty little canal has been made by abstracting water from the river and conducting it through the streets. On either side of this stream a broad road runs. Almost exactly midway through the city the roads broaden and open into the spacious Square of St. Michael, containing the cathedral, the fine old city hall, several good town-houses dating two or three hundred years back, barracks, and the modern but not unsightly Government offices. Through this square and the streets leading to it from west and east there now runs an excellent service of electric cars; but at the date with which we are concerned a crazy fiacre or a crazier omnibus was the only public means of conveyance. Not a few good private equipages were, however, to be seen, for the Kravonians have been from of old lovers of horses. The city has a population bordering on a hundred thousand, and, besides being the principal depot and centre of distribution for a rich pastoral and agricultural country, it transacts a respectable export trade in hides and timber. It was possible for a careful man to grow rich in Slavna, even though he were not a politician nor a Government official.
Two or three years earlier, an enterprising Frenchman of the name of Rousseau had determined to provide Slavna with a first-rate modern hotel andcafé. Nothing could have consorted better with the views of King Alexis Stefanovitch, and Monsieur Rousseau obtained, on very favorable terms, a large site at the southeast end of the city, just where the North and South rivers reunite. Here he built his hostelry and named itpietatis causâ, the Hôtel de Paris. A fine terrace ran along the front of the house, abutting on the boulevard and affording a pleasant view of the royal park and the Palace in the distance on the opposite bank.
On this terrace, it being a fine October morning, sat Sophy, drinking a cup of chocolate.
The scene before her, if not quite living up to the name of the hotel, was yet animated enough. A score of handsome carriages drove by, some containing gayly dressed ladies, some officers in smart uniforms. Other officers rode or walked by; civil functionaries, journalists, and a straggling line of onlookers swelled the stream which set towards the Palace. Awaking from a reverie to mark the unwonted stir, Sophy saw the leaders of the informal procession crossing the ornamental iron bridge which spanned the Krath, a quarter of a mile from where she sat, and gave access to the King's demesne on the left bank.
"Right bank—left bank! It sounds like home!" she thought to herself, smiling perhaps rather bitterly. "Home!" Her home now was a single room over a goldsmith's shop, whither she had removed to relieve Marie Zerkovitch from a hospitality too burdensome, as Sophy feared, for her existing resources to sustain.
The reverie bore breaking; it had been none too pleasant; in it sad memories disputed place with present difficulties. Some third or so remained of Lady Meg's hundred-pound note. Necessity had forced a use of the money at any cost to pride. When all was gone, Sophy would have to depend on what is so often a last and so often a vain refuge—the teaching of French; it was the only subject which she could claim to teach. Verily, it was a poor prospect; it was better to look at the officers and the ladies than to think of it—ay, better than to think of Casimir and of what lay in the past. With her strong will she strove to steel herself alike against recollection and against apprehension.
Thecaféwas nearly deserted; the hour was too early for the citizens, and Sophy's own chocolate had been merely an excuse to sit down. Yet presently a young officer in a hussar uniform stopped his horse opposite the door, and, giving over the reins to an orderly who attended him, nimbly dismounted. Tall and fair, with a pleasant, open face, he wore his finery with a dashing air, and caressed a delicate, upturned mustache as he glanced round, choosing his seat. The next moment he advanced towards Sophy; giving her a polite salute, he indicated the little table next to hers.
"Mademoiselle permits?" he asked. "She has, I fear, forgotten, but I have the honor to be an acquaintance of hers."
"I remember," smiled Sophy. "Captain Markart? We met at Madame Zerkovitch's."
"Oh, that's pleasant of you!" he cried. "I hate being clean forgotten. But I fear you remember me only because I sang so badly!"
"I remember best that you said you wanted to go and help France, but your General wouldn't let you."
"Ah, I know why you remember that—you especially! Forgive me—our friend Marie Zerkovitch told me." He turned away for a moment to give an order to the waiter.
"What's going on to-day?" asked Sophy. "Where's everybody going?"
"Why, you are a stranger, mademoiselle!" he laughed. "It's the King's name-day, and we all go and congratulate him."
"Is that it? Are you going?"
"Certainly; in attendance on my General—General Stenovics. My lodgings are near here, his house at the other end of the boulevard, so he gave me leave to meet him here. I thought I would come early and fortify myself a little for the ordeal. To mademoiselle's good health!" He looked at her with openly admiring eyes, to which tribute Sophy accorded a lazy, unembarrassed smile. She leaned her chin on her hand, turning her right cheek towards him. Sophy was never disdainful, never neglectful; her pose now was good.
"What sort of a man is the King?" she asked.
"The King is most emphatically a very good sort of fellow—a very good old fellow. I only wish his son was like him! The Prince is a Tartar. Has he gone by yet?"
"I don't think so. I suppose he'd have an escort, wouldn't he? I don't know him by sight yet. Does everybody call the King a good fellow?"
"Some people are so extremely righteous!" pleaded Markart, ruefully. "And, anyhow, he has reformed now."
"Because he's old?"
"Fifty-nine! Is that so very old? No; I rather attribute it—you're discreet, I hope? I'm putting my fortunes in your hands—to Madame la Comtesse."
"The Countess Ellenburg? Marie has told me something about her."
"Ah! Madame Zerkovitch is a friend of hers?"
"Not intimate, I think. And is the Countess oppressively respectable, Captain Markart?"
"Women in her position always are," said the Captain, with an affected sigh: his round, chubby face was wrinkled with merriment. "You see, a morganatic marriage isn't such a well-established institution here as in some other countries. Oh, it's legal enough, no doubt, if it's agreed to on that basis. But the Stefanovitches have in the past often made non-royal marriages—with their own subjects generally. Well, there was nobody else for them to marry! Alexis got promotion in his first marriage—an Italian Bourbon, which is always respectable, if not very brilliant. That gave us a position, and it couldn't be thrown away. So the second marriage had to be morganatic. Only—well, women are ambitious, and she has a young son who bears the King's name—a boy twelve years old."